Chapter L: DA VINCI The Last Supper Milan 290 (2)

There, now you know all about it: now you can go home and paint just such another. If you do, do pray remember to paint the hands of the figures as they are here depicted; they are as wonderful portraits as the faces. None of your slim Van Dyck elegancies, which have done duty at the cuffs of so many doublets; but each man with a hand for himself, as with a face for himself. I blushed for the coarseness of one of the chiefs in this great company, that fellow behind "William the Drummer," splendidly attired, sitting full in the face of the public; and holding a pork-bone in his hand. Suppose the _Saturday Review_ critic were to come suddenly on this picture? Ah! what a shock it would give that noble nature! Why is that knuckle of pork not painted out? at any rate, why is not a little fringe of lace painted round it? or a cut pink paper? or couldn't a smelling-bottle be painted in instead, with a crest and a gold top, or a cambric pocket-handkerchief in lieu of the horrid pig, with a pink coronet in the corner? or suppose you covered the man's hand (which is very coarse and strong), and gave him the decency of a kid glove? But a piece of pork in a naked hand? O nerves and eau de Cologne, hide it, hide it!

In spite of this lamentable coarseness, my noble sergeant, give me thy hand as nature made it! A great, and famous, and noble handiwork I have seen here. Not the greatest picture in the world--not a work of the highest genius--but a performance so great, various, and admirable, so shrewd of humour, so wise of observation, so honest and complete of expression, that to have seen it has been a delight, and to remember it will be a pleasure for days to come. Well done, Bartholomeus Van der Helst! Brave, meritorious, victorious, happy Bartholomew, to whom it has been given to produce a masterpiece!

... Was it a dream? It seems like one. Have we been to Holland? Have we heard the chimes at midnight at Antwerp? Were we really away for a week, or have I been sitting up in the room dozing, before this stale old desk? Here's the desk; yes. But if it has been a dream, how could I have learned to hum that tune out of _Dinorah?_ Ah, is it that tune, or myself that I am humming? If it was a dream how comes this yellow NOTICE DES TABLEAUX DU MUSÉE D'AMSTERDAM AVEC FASCIMILE DES MONOGRAMMES before me, and this signature of the gallant

Bartholomeus van der Helst fecit A; 1648.

Yes, indeed, it was a delightful little holiday; it lasted a whole week.

_Roundabout Papers_ (London, 1863).

L'EMBARQUEMENT POUR L'ÎLE DE CYTHÈRE

(_WATTEAU_)

EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT

Watteau is the great poet of the Eighteenth Century. A creation, a whole creation of poetry and dreams, emanated from his brain and filled his work with the elegance of a supernatural life. From the fantasies of his brain, from the caprice of his art, from his perfectly original genius, not one but a thousand fairies took their flight. From the enchanted visions of his imagination, the painter has drawn an ideal world, and, superior to his own time, he has created one of those Shakespearian realms, one of those countries of love and light, one of those paradises of gallantry that Polyphile built upon the cloud of dreams for the delicate joy of poetic mortals.

Watteau revived grace. Grace with Watteau is not the antique grace--a rigid and solid charm, the perfection of the marble of a Galatea, the entirely plastic and the material glory of a Venus. Grace with Watteau is grace. It is that nothing that invests a woman with an attraction, a coquetry, a more than physical beauty. It is that subtile quality which seems the smile of a line, the soul of form, the spiritual physiognomy of matter.

All the fascinations of a woman in repose: languor, idleness, abandon, leaning back, reclining at full length, nonchalance, the cadences of pose, the pretty air of profiles bending over the scales of love (_gammes d'amour_), the receding curves of the bosom, the serpentine lines and undulations, the suppleness of the female body, the play of slender fingers on the handle of a fan and the indiscretions of high heels beyond the skirts, and the happy fortune of deportment, and the coquetry of actions, and the management of the shoulders, and all that knowledge that was taught to women by the mirrors of the last century,--the mimicry of grace!--lives in Watteau with its blossom and its accent, immortal and fixed in a more vital proof than the bosom of the wife of Diomedes moulded by the ashes of Pompeii. And if this grace is animated by Watteau, if he looses it from repose and immobility, if he renders it active and moving, it seems that it works with a rhythm and that its measured pace is a dance led by some harmony.

How decorative is the form of woman, and her grace! O nature, wherein the painter's poetic fancies wander! O landscape! O stage fit for a desirable life! a helpful land, gallant woods, meadows full of music, groves propitious to the sports of Echo! cradling trees hung with baskets of flowers! desert places far from the jealous world, touched by the magic brush of a Servandoni, refreshed with fountains, peopled with marbles and statues, and Naiads, that spot the trembling shadow of the leaves! jets of water suddenly springing up in the midst of farm-yards! an amiable and radiant countryside! Suns of apotheosis, beautiful lights sleeping on the lawns, penetrating and translucent verdure without one shadow where the palette of Veronese, the riot of purple, and of blonde tresses may find sleep. Rural delights! murmurous and gorgeous decorations! gardens thick with brier and rose! French landscapes planted with Italian pines! villages gay with weddings and carriages, ceremonies, toilettes, and fêtes stunned with the noise of violins and flutes leading the bridal of Nature and the Opera to a Jesuit fane! Rustic scene on the green curtain, on the flowery slope up which the _Comédie Française_ climbs and the _Comédie Italienne_ gambols.

Quick! to array the spring in ball costume, Watteau's heavens and earth, quick. _Gelosi!_ A bergomask laugh shall be the laughter, animation, and action, and movement of the piece. Look where Folly, capped and belled, runs and wakes gaiety, zephyrs, and noise! Ruffs and caps, belts and daggers, little vests and short mantles, go and come. The band of buffoons comes running, bringing beneath the shady boughs the carnival of human passions and its rainbow-hued garb. Variegated family, clothed with sunlight and brilliant silk! that masks with the night! that patches and paints with the moon! Harlequin, as graceful as a product of the pencil of Parmesan! Pierrot, with his arms at his side, as straight as an I, and the Tartaglias, and the Scapins, and the Cassandras, and the Doctors, and the favourite Mezzetin "the big brown man with the laughing face" always in the foreground with his cap on the back of his head--striped all over like a zebra, proud as a god, and drunk as a Silenus! It is the _Comédie Italienne_ that plays the guitar in all these landscapes....

Here is the new Olympus and the new mythology; the Olympus of all the demi-gods forgotten by antiquity. Here is the deification of the ideas of the Eighteenth Century, the soul of Watteau's world and time led to the Pantheon of human passions and fashions. These are the new humours of aging humanity--Languor, Gallantry, and Reverie, which Watteau incarnates as clothed allegories, and which he rests upon the _pulvinar_ of a divine nature; these are the moral muses of our age out of which he has created the women, or, we might say, the goddesses of these divine pictures.

Love is the light of this world, it penetrates and fills it. It is the youth and serenity of it; and amidst rivers and mountains, promenades and gardens, lakes and fountains, the Paradise of Watteau unfolds; it is Cythera. Under a sky painted with the colours of summer, the galley of Cleopatra swings at the bank. The waves are stilled. The woods are hushed. From the grass to the firmament, beating the motionless air with their butterfly wings, a host of Cupids fly, fly, play and dance, here tying careless couples with roses, and tying above a circlet of kisses that has risen from earth to the sky. Here is the temple, here is the end of this world: the painter's _L'Amour paisible_, Love disarmed, seated in the shadows, which the poet of Theos wished to engrave upon a sweet cup of spring; a smiling Arcadia; a Decameron of sentiment; a tender meditation; attentions with vague glances; words that lull the soul; a platonic gallantry, a leisure occupied by the heart, an idleness of youthful company; a court of amorous thoughts; the emotional and playful courtesy of the young newly married leaning upon the offered arm; eyes without fever, desire without appetite, voluptuousness without desire, audacious gestures regulated like the ballet for a spectacle, and tranquil defences disdainful of haste through their security; the romance of the body and the mind, soothed, pacified, resuscitated, happy; an idleness of passion at which the stone satyrs lurking in the green _coulisses_ laugh with their goat-laughter. Adieu to the bacchanales led by Gillot, that last pagan of the Renaissance, born of the libations of the Pleiad to the rustic gods of Arcueil! Adieu to the Olympus of the _Io Pæan_, the hoarse pipe and the goat-footed Gods, the laughter of the _Cyclops_ of Euripides and the _Evohe_ of Ronsard, the licentious triumphs, the ivy-crowned Joys;

"_Et la libre cadence
De leur danse._"

These gods have gone, and Rubens, who lives again in that palette of light and rosy flesh, wanders bewildered in these _fêtes_, where the riot of the senses is stilled,--animated caprices which seem to await the crack of a whip to dissolve and disappear in the realm of fancy like a mid-summer night's dream! It is Cythera; but it is Watteau's. It is love, but it is a poetic love, a love that dreams and thinks; modern love, with its aspirations and its crown of melancholy.

Yes, at the heart of this work of Watteau's, I do not know what slow and vague harmony murmurs behind those laughing words; I do not know what musical and sweetly contagious sorrow is diffused throughout these gallant _fêtes_. Like the fascination of Venice, I do not know what veiled and sighing poetry in low tones holds here the charmed spirit. The man has passed across his work; and this work you come to regard as the play and distraction of a suffering thought, like the playthings of a sick child who is now dead....

But let us speak of that masterpiece of French masterpieces, that canvas which has held a distinguished place on one of the walls of the _salon carré_ for fifty years, _L'Embarquement de Cythère_.

Observe all that ground lightly coated with a transparent and golden varnish, all that ground covered with rapid strokes of the brush lightly laid on with a delicate touch. Notice that green of the trees shot through with red tones, penetrated with quivering air, and the vaporous light of autumn. Notice the delicate water-colour effect of thick oil, the general smoothness of the canvas, the relief of this pouch or hood; notice the full modelling of the little faces with their glances in the confused outlines of the eye and their smiles in the suggested outlines of the mouth. The beautiful and flowing sweep of the brush over those _décolletages_, the bare flesh glowing with voluptuous rose among the shadows of the wood! The pretty crossings of the brush to round a neck! The beautiful undulating folds with soft breaks like those which the modeller makes in the clay! And the spirit and the gallantry of touch of Watteau's brush in the feminine trifles and headdresses and finger-tips,--and everything it approaches! And the harmony of those sunlit distances, those mountains of rosy snow, those waters of verdurous reflections; and again those rays of sunlight falling upon robes of rose and yellow, mauve petticoats, blue mantles, shot-coloured vests, and little white dogs with fiery spots. For no painter has equalled Watteau in rendering beautifully coloured objects transfigured by a ray of sunlight, their soft fading and that kind of diffused blossoming of their brilliancy under the full light. Let your eyes rest for a moment on that band of pilgrims of both sexes hurrying, beneath the setting sun, towards the galley of Love that is about to set sail: there is the joyousness of the most adorable colours in the world surprised in a ray of the sun, and all that haze and tender silk in the radiant shower involuntarily remind you of those brilliant insects that we find dead, but with still living colours, in the golden glow of a piece of amber.

This picture, the _Embarquement de Cythère_, is the wonder of wonders of this master.

_L'Art du Dix-huitième Siècle_ (3d ed., Paris, 1880).

THE SISTINE MADONNA

(_RAPHAEL_)

F.A. GRUYER

Raphael seemed to have attained perfection in the _Virgin with the Fish_; however, four or five years later, he was to rise infinitely higher and display something superior to art and inaccessible to science.

It was in 1518 that the Benedictines of the monastery of St. Sixtus ordered this picture. They had required that the Virgin and the Infant Jesus should be in the company of St. Sixtus and St. Barbara. This is how Raphael entered into their views.

Deep shadows were veiling from us the majesty of the skies. Suddenly light succeeds the obscurity, and the Infant Jesus and Mary appear surrounded by a brightness so intense that the eyes can scarcely bear it. Between two green curtains drawn to either side of the picture, amid an aureole of innumerable cherubin, the Virgin is seen standing upon the clouds, with her son in her arms, showing him to the world as its Redeemer and Sovereign Judge. Lower down, St. Sixtus and St. Barbara are kneeling on the clouds on either side. Nothing is visible of the earth, but it is divined by the gestures and glances of the two saints, who are pointing to the multitude for whom they are imploring the divine mercy. Two angels are leaning on a kind of balustrade whose horizontal line forms a solid plane at the base of the composition. Nothing could be more elementary than the idea of such a picture; the ancient symmetry and the most rigid parallelism are scrupulously observed. Raphael becomes almost archaic, and, while returning to the simplicity of primitive traditions, by the force of genius he confounds the scientific exaggeration that is already so close to decadence. Doubtless he had raised his eyes high every time he had taken antiquity as a model, but he raised them much higher still by becoming exclusively Christian again, and by comprehending that the humblest way is not only the surest, but also the most sublime. Why is such simple means so highly successful in exalting our feelings? Why is it, when looking at this picture, we have moments of divine oblivion in which we fancy ourselves in Heaven? That is what we must try to penetrate and comprehend.

The principal figure of the picture is the Infant Jesus. He is no longer the graceful _Bambino_ that we have so often seen in the arms of Raphael's Madonnas, gentle and encouraging to the eyes of mankind, or again he who, erewhile, in the _Virgin with the Fish_, leaned towards the young Tobit; it is the God himself, it is the God of Justice and of the Last Day. In the most humble state of our flesh, beneath the veil of infancy, we see the terrifying splendour of infinite majesty in this picture. The divine Infant leaves between himself and us a place for fear, and in his presence we experience something of the fear of God that Adam felt and that he transmitted to his race. For attaining such heights of impression the means employed by Raphael are of an incomprehensible simplicity. The Infant Jesus nestles familiarly in his mother's arms. Sitting on a fold of the white veil that the Virgin supports with her left hand, he leans against the Madonna's right arm; his legs are crossed one above the other; the whole of the left arm follows the bend of the body and the left hand rests upon the right leg; at the same time, the right shoulder being raised by Mary's hand, the right arm is bent at the elbow and the hand grasps the Virgin's veil. This attitude, so natural, so true, so unstudied, expresses grandeur and sovereignty. Nothing can be more elementary nor more powerful. The light rests calmly upon every part of this beautiful body and all its members in such fine repose. Humanity was never seen under such radiance. The Son of God, in transporting to Heaven the terrestrial form of his infancy, has made it divine for all eternity. Raphael doubtless owed to antiquity something of the power that enabled him spontaneously to create such a masterpiece; but in this case he has far surpassed his models, and we should search vainly in antique art for a more ideal and grand figure than that of this marvellous infant. However, hitherto we have only examined the body, what shall we say about the head to give a true idea of it? In fact, that is perhaps the most extraordinary and most indescribable part of the whole picture. The Infant Jesus seems to recoil from the spectacle of human shame; he lovingly presses against the Virgin's breast, softly rests his forehead against his Mother's cheek, and darts towards the world one of those flaming and terrible glances at which, it is said, everything in heaven, on earth, and in hell trembles. His disordered hair stands upright and quivers as in the breath of the tempest, and sombre clouds pass across the widely modelled forehead; the brows are frowning, the pupils dilate and the flame is ready to dart forth; the eyes, profound and terrible, are preparing to flash with lightning; they still withhold it, but we feel that it may break forth, and we tremble. This glance is truly splendid; it fascinates you, attracts you, and, at the same time, fills you with terror. The lips are quivering, and, from the point of view of line, that is the great mystery, I think; the upper lip, visibly lifted on the left side, assumes a strange accent of anger and indignation. This deviation of a single feature is materially a small matter, and yet it suffices to stamp the whole countenance with irresistible action. The Infant Jesus assumes a formidable aspect; we recognize in him the Sovereign Judge; his power is infinite and one act of his will be sufficient to condemn or absolve. The _Virgin of the Chair_ had given us a presentiment of this image in 1516; the _Virgin of St. Sixtus_ shows it to us in 1518, in its eternal grandeur and sublime reality. But the Word of God would scarcely leave room for anything but fear, if the Virgin did not immediately come to shed hope in the soul terrified at the idea of justice.

In fact, the Virgin remains calm and serene beside her enraged son, and reassures our heart also with her confidence. If she presents the Son of God to the world under a terrifying aspect, at the same time she presses him so tenderly against her breast, and her features, under the splendour of the divine radiance, shine with such purity that we feel the flame that purifies all passing within ourselves. The Virgin appears here like the dawning light. She advances from right to left, beautiful as the skies, light as the cloud that bears her. Her gait, or rather her flight through the air, is stamped with royal nobleness and dignity. Her right hand, raised as high as the shoulder, holds the body of Jesus under his right arm, and the Saviour lies back against his Mother's right arm, while Mary's left arm is placed under the Infant's body to support and carry him. The Virgin of St. Sixtus, like every Madonna, wears a red robe and a white mantle; and Art has never done greater things with drapery with such simple elements. The mantle falls with a beautiful movement over the lower part of the body and floats in wide folds, which, while sharply defining the form and movement of the lower limbs, reveals the bare feet which are of admirable form and colour. The robe, ornamented only with a little gold embroidery on the sleeve, is of a purple tint in the shadows and becomes rose in the light; it is girdled below the breast like the antique statues, and reveals the neck as well as the top of the shoulders, which are surrounded by a veil of white gauze. A long scarf of the same colour as the veil but tinted with bistre, is placed on the crown of the head, and, distending like a sail above the left shoulder, returns to the left hand to serve as a support for the Infant, and runs along the body of Jesus, who grasps it with his right hand. The Virgin's head appears in full illumination without any artifice, and glows solely with its own beauty. It is three quarters left, indeed almost full face, in a similar position but in opposition to the Saviour's head, which, as we have seen, is three quarters right and almost full face also. The hair, a light chestnut, is arranged simply in smooth and flat bands lightly waved above the brow, leaving the ears, cheeks, and temples completely uncovered, and not interfering in any way with the outlines of the face. The forehead, of a medium height, presents a widely developed surface, in the centre of which glows a light that is continued down the bridge of the nose. The eyes, of irreproachable shape, are full of brilliance, and their gaze sheds over all it illumines an infinite softness mingled with an indefinable exaltation. The mouth trembles with divine emotion and seems to quiver with celestial bliss.

Another remarkable thing in this supreme manifestation of genius is that in the Virgin and the Infant, of such different, we might almost say such opposite expressions, the same features are noticeably repeated. Raphael has been faithful to the last to the system he adopted in almost his earliest pictures, and to make this intentional resemblance more noticeable here he has placed the two heads close together, and shown them almost full face, so that there shall be no distracting element; and has opposed them to each other by turning them in different ways so that they may complement each other and be reflected in one another as in a mirror. Therefore, as the same glory surrounds both Mother and Son at the same time, so the same character of beauty is found faithfully reproduced in each. The skulls of both have the same general conformation, the same intelligence shines upon the two brows, although the Saviour's is dark and menacing whilst the Virgin's remains radiant and clear; the eyes have also the same shape and are full of the same fire, though the glance of the one is terrible and of the other, reassuring; the mouth has the same lines, the same nobility, and the same quiver that has the power of alternately inspiring terror and tranquillity; and the cleft in the chin is identical. The colour also helps to make an almost perfect unity of these two figures--we have the same white and solid flesh tints, strong and delicate; the same warm and always luminous shadows. Indeed, Jesus is confounded with Mary, so to speak, so that the two forms together make one and the same body, and, moreover, the Saviour at need may get rid of his majestic nakedness beneath the veil and in the mantle of Mary.

This Virgin, in which Raphael has surpassed himself, was painted in a moment of veritable exaltation of genius. It was not laboriously conceived; it was born of itself, spontaneously complete, like the antique Minerva, with its perfect form and beauty, and it was the recompense for an entire life consecrated without intermission to the search after nature and truth, to the study of the masters and all the traditions, to the cult of the ideal and especially of the Virgin.

After having produced so many rare masterpieces, his love and faith were carried to such a pitch of power and enthusiasm that he seemed to be borne up by them, and, suddenly penetrating into a sphere superior to all he had hitherto visited, he painted a Virgin incomparably more beautiful than all the admirable Virgins he had painted before. Not a single design, nor preparatory study, puts us on the trace of any bringing forth of any of the parts of this picture.

However, if the image of this Virgin was traced on the canvas by a hand suddenly inspired, I think that at the same time Raphael confronted his inspiration with nature, and that, whilst resolutely springing towards the infinite, he yet set himself face to face with reality. Perhaps, strictly, he would have had no need of that; he had amassed so much, his memory placed such numerous, varied, and exact documents at the service of his will, that he had only to remember in order almost immediately to produce an accomplished whole. Moreover, he had the model he wanted, possessing without dominating it; and without losing sight of his ideal, it was to this model that he applied himself for the embodiment of his idea. Thus, in the Virgin of St. Sixtus, we recognize, not the image of La Fornarina, but the transfiguration of her image. None of her features are left and yet it is she, but so purified that no trouble nor shadow comes to dim the radiant and virginal brightness of the picture. In every human creature there is a divine germ that cannot flourish on earth and whose blossoming is only in the skies; this is the flowering, the splendour of which is shown in the Virgin of St. Sixtus. We care very little about Raphael's private life; we only affirm in the presence of his work that as a painter he did not love for this life only, and that from the beginning to the end of his career he had the respect and the taste for eternal love. Since the day when the Virgin appeared transfigured to the seer of the Apocalypse, she had never revealed herself in such effulgence. Before this picture, we lose every memory of earth and see nothing but the Queen of Heaven and of the angels, the creature elect and blessed above all creatures. In thus painting the Virgin, Raphael has almost reached the confines of divinity.

But everything in this picture is food for admiration, even the atmosphere that envelops it and those innumerable and endless legions of cherubin that gravitate around the Virgin and the Word of God. The aureole that encircles the divine group shows nothing at first but dazzling and golden light; then, as it recedes from the centre, this light gradually pales and insensibly merges from the most intense gold into the purest blue, and is filled with those heads, chaste, innocent, and fervent, that spring beneath the brush of Raphael like the flowers at the breath of Spring. These aërial creatures throng to contemplate the Virgin, and their forms recall those radiances in the shape of crowns that fill the Dantesque Paradise, making the name of Mary resound with their praises. Our eyes and mind lose themselves in the immense multitude of these happy spirits. "Number if you can the sands of the sea or the stars in the sky, those that are visible and invisible, and still believe that you have not attained the number of the angels. It costs God nothing to multiply the most excellent things, and it is the most beautiful of which he is most prodigal." We cannot keep our eyes away from that sky; we gaze at it and love to dazzle and weary our eyes with it.

On either side of the Virgin, kneel St. Sixtus and St. Barbara. Placed also amid the clouds, but below the Madonna, they are near the sovereign mediatrix, as mediators also between the world and the Sovereign Judge. St. Sixtus is seen on the right in profile, his head is raised towards the Infant Jesus, his left hand is placed devoutly on his breast while his right is foreshortened and points towards the spectator. He wears a white rochet tied by a girdle with golden tassels, a white amice around his neck, a magnificent pallium woven with gold falling to his feet, and a long chasuble embroidered with gold and lined with red enveloping his shoulders and arms, the wide folds of which are lost amid the clouds. His head is bare, and his white tiara, adorned with the triple crown, is placed on the balustrade that runs horizontally across the base of the picture. It is impossible to find a representation of pontifical sovereignty of greater fervour, grandeur, and truth. His cranium is bald and has only a crown of grey hair remaining. His emaciated face is full of ardour and power: his eyes penetrate straight into the splendour of God; and his mouth, although partially hidden by the grey beard that covers the lower part of his face, is praying with extraordinary fervour. His gesture, so resolute and respectful, is in itself an act of love and charity, and his very hands, so true in drawing and so bold in action, have their special eloquence. It seems impossible that the divine justice will not allow itself to be swayed by such intercession.

St. Barbara is opposite St. Sixtus. Her body is in left profile, towards the Virgin, while her head, turned over her left shoulder towards the spectator, appears almost in full face. Only her left arm and hand are visible, pressed against her breast. Her left knee, directly resting upon the cloud, sustains the weight of her body; her right leg, which is raised, only touches the clouds with the foot. Her head is as beautiful, youthful, and fresh as the action of her whole figure is easy, elegant, and noble. Then where did Raphael find this serenity if not in himself? The saint, gently bending towards the earth, seems to want to receive our hopes and vows to bear them to Heaven. She is one of those virgins who are created in the image of the Virgin par excellence. Nevertheless, here she affects certain worldly appearances which, beside the severe simplicity of the Mother of the Word, establish a hierarchy between the two figures and a sort of line of demarcation that cannot be crossed. The higher we soar the more is grandeur simplified in everything.

St. Barbara's hair is arranged with a certain elegance; it is very abundant, of an ash blonde, and forms thick waving bands that are gathered off the temples and are crossed by two white fillets, one of which crosses the top of the forehead like a diadem. Her eyes, lowered towards the earth, are perfectly beautiful; her mouth is calm and sweet; and purity shines in all her features. Her shoulders are bare, only covered with a veil of white gauze which falls down her back, passes under her arm and returns to her breast where her left hand holds it. Her robe of violet shading into a neutral tint, is only visible where it covers her leg; for a green mantle, thrown over it, envelops the body, only revealing the arm, the sleeve of which is blue on the upper arm, yellow, and slightly puffed at the shoulder, and yellow also on the forearm. All this is of a grand air and in exquisite taste. Thus draped, the figure has a charming effect which, without detracting from the religious idea, leaves room also for a more human sentiment.

Raphael, doubtless, had thought that the figures of the Virgin, the Infant Jesus, St. Sixtus, and St. Barbara would alone be sufficient for his picture; but the empty space remaining beneath the feet of the Madonna was too considerable to be filled up simply by clouds: and therefore he added that rigid and horizontal supporting bar on which two angels lean upon their elbows, contemplating the glory of the Virgin with such rapture. In fact, these angels seem to be painted as an afterthought, for, laid in with a light brush, they scarcely cover the clouds, but allow the underlying pigment to show through.

Little wings of vivid tint complete these aërial creatures, always living around Raphael and always ready to come from his brush. Although held to nature by the most intimate ties, although perhaps too familiar in attitude and manner, they are yet supernatural by the clearness of their intelligence and by the power of their admiration. We are enchanted with their candour and beauty. They are full of zeal and enthusiasm; they possess the grace of the Pagan Loves merged into Christian innocence and chastity. Their faith is as beautiful as the sky, and in loving them it is almost for God himself that we feel the love.

Such are the various parts of this work; their union forms the most sublime harmony, and each in particular brings a divine note to this celestial concert. By what process was this picture produced? We can scarcely say, so greatly does the inspiration predominate over the technique.

Raphael aimed at the sublime; and the rest was given to him as increase. The colour is just what it should be in such a subject; whilst keeping to a sweet, calm, and peaceful scale, it is resplendent with light, and we ask ourselves whether it is not the hand of an angel rather than that of a man that has been able to realize such a marvel.

The _Virgin of St. Sixtus_ is the most beautiful picture in the world. To copy this Virgin is to attempt the impossible. Study it a hundred times and a hundred times it will reveal itself under a new aspect. It was before this picture, it is said, that Correggio cried: "And I also, I am a painter."

The _Virgin of St. Sixtus_ was immediately placed where it was meant to be; it was present in triumph every day for two hundred and thirty-six years at the divine sacrament; and never was a human work so worthy of that signal honour.

In 1734 the degenerate monks of St. Sixtus preferred a little gold to their inestimable masterpiece, and for a miserable sum of a hundred and some thousands of francs (110,000 to 120,000), they sold their Virgin to Augustus III., Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. That day the barbarians were not those the Italians think....

At Dresden, the Madonna was received with great pomp. Augustus III. had it brought in haste into the reception hall of his palace; as the place of honour was occupied by the throne, he, himself, seized the royal chair, and relegating it to a less conspicuous station, he cried: "Room for the great Raphael." If this is historic, it does honour to the prince; if legendary, it is to the glory of the people whose sentiment it translates.

_Les Vierges de Raphaël_ (Paris, 1869).

THE DREAM OF ST. URSULA

(_CARPACCIO_)

JOHN RUSKIN

In the year 1869, just before leaving Venice I had been carefully looking at a picture by Victor Carpaccio, representing the dream of a young princess. Carpaccio has taken much pains to explain to us, as far as he can, the kind of life she leads, by completely painting her little bedroom in the light of dawn, so that you can see everything in it. It is lighted by two doubly-arched windows, the arches being painted crimson round their edges, and the capitals of the shafts that bear them, gilded. They are filled at the top with small round panes of glass; but beneath, are open to the blue morning sky, with a low lattice across them; and in the one at the back of the room are set two beautiful white Greek vases with a plant in each; one having rich dark and pointed green leaves, the other crimson flowers, but not of any species known to me, each at the end of a branch like a spray of heath.

These flower-pots stand on a shelf which runs all round the room, and beneath the window, at about the height of the elbow, and serves to put things on anywhere: beneath it, down to the floor, the walls are covered with green cloth; but above are bare and white. The second window is nearly opposite the bed, and in front of it is the princess's reading-table, some two feet and a half square, covered by a red cloth with a white border and dainty fringe; and beside it her seat, not at all like a reading chair in Oxford, but a very small three-legged stool like a music stool, covered with crimson cloth. On the table are a book, set up at a slope fittest for reading, and an hour-glass. Under the shelf near the table so as to be easily reached by the outstretched arm, is a press full of books. The door of this has been left open, and the books, I am grieved to say, are rather in disorder, having been pulled about before the princess went to bed, and one left standing on its side.

Opposite this window, on the white wall, is a small shrine or picture (I can't see which, for it is in sharp retiring perspective), with a lamp before it, and a silver vessel hung from the lamp, looking like one for holding incense.

The bed is a broad four-poster, the posts being beautifully wrought golden or gilded rods, variously wreathed and branched, carrying a canopy of warm red. The princess's shield is at the head of it, and the feet are raised entirely above the floor of the room, on a dais which projects at the lower end so as to form a seat, on which the child has laid her crown. Her little blue slippers lie at the side of the bed,--her white dog beside them, the coverlid is scarlet, the white sheet folded half way back over it; the young girl lies straight, bending neither at waist nor knee, the sheet rising and falling over her in a narrow unbroken wave, like the shape of the coverlid of the last sleep, when the turf scarcely rises. She is some seventeen or eighteen years old, her head is turned towards us on the pillow, the cheek resting on her hand, as if she were thinking, yet utterly calm in sleep, and almost colourless. Her hair is tied with a narrow riband, and divided into two wreaths, which encircle her head like a double crown. The white nightgown hides the arm raised on the pillow, down to the wrist.

At the door of the room an angel enters; (the little dog, though lying awake, vigilant, takes no notice.) He is a very small angel, his head just rises a little above the shelf round the room, and would only reach as high as the princess's chin, if she were standing up. He has soft grey wings, lustreless; and his dress, of subdued blue, has violet sleeves, open above the elbow, and showing white sleeves below. He comes in without haste, his body, like a mortal one, casting shadow from the light through the door behind, his face perfectly quiet; a palm-branch in his right hand--a scroll in his left.

So dreams the princess, with blessed eyes, that need no earthly dawn. It is very pretty of Carpaccio to make her dream out the angel's dress so particularly, and notice the slashed sleeves; and to dream so little an angel--very nearly a doll angel,--bringing her the branch of palm, and message. But the lovely characteristic of all is the evident delight of her continual life. Royal power over herself, and happiness in her flowers, her books, her sleeping and waking, her prayers, her dreams, her earth, her heaven....

"How do I know the princess is industrious?"

Partly by the trim state of her room,--by the hour-glass on the table,--by the evident use of all the books she has, (well bound, every one of them, in stoutest leather or velvet, and with no dog's-ears,) but more distinctly from another picture of her, not asleep. In that one a prince of England has sent to ask her in marriage: and her father, little liking to part with her, sends for her to his room to ask her what she would do. He sits, moody and sorrowful; she, standing before him in a plain house-wifely dress, talks quietly, going on with her needlework all the time.

A work-woman, friends, she, no less than a princess; and princess most in being so. In like manner, is a picture by a Florentine, whose mind I would fain have you know somewhat, as well as Carpaccio's--Sandro Botticelli--the girl who is to be the wife of Moses, when he first sees her at the desert well, has fruit in her left hand, but a distaff in her right.[2]

"To do good work, whether you live or die," it is the entrance to all Princedoms; and if not done, the day will come, and that infallibly, when you must labour for evil instead of good.

_Fors Clavigera_ (Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, 1872).

FOOTNOTES:

[2] More accurately a rod cloven into three at the top, and so holding the wool. The fruit is a bunch of apples; she has golden sandals, and a wreath of myrtle round her hair.

THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS

(_RUBENS_)

EUGÈNE FROMENTIN

Many people say _Antwerp_; but many also say _the country of Rubens_, and this mode of speech more exactly expresses all the things that constitute the magic of the place: a great city, a great personal destiny, a famous school, and ultra-celebrated pictures. All this is imposing, and our imagination becomes excited rather more than usual when, in the centre of the _Place Vert_, we see the statue of Rubens and, farther on, the old basilica where are preserved the triptychs which, humanly speaking, have consecrated it.

The statue is not a masterpiece; but it is he, in his own home. Under the form of a man, who was nothing but a painter, with the sole attributes of a painter, in perfect truth it personifies the sole Flemish sovereignty which has neither been contested nor menaced, and which certainly never will be.

At the end of the square is seen Notre Dame; it presents itself in profile, being outlined by one of its lateral faces, the darkest one, on account of the rains beating on that side. It is made to look blacker and bigger by being surrounded with light and low buildings. With its carved stonework, its rusty tone, its blue and lustrous roof, its colossal tower where the golden disk and the golden needles of its dial glitter in the stone discoloured by the vapours from the Scheldt and by the winters, it assumes monstrous proportions. When the sky is troubled, as it is to-day, it adds all its own strange caprices to the grandeur of the lines. Imagine then the invention of a Gothic Piranesi, exaggerated by the fancy of the North, wildly illuminated by a stormy day, and standing out in irregular blotches against the scenic background of a sky entirely black or entirely white, and full of tempest. A more original or more striking preliminary stage-setting could not be contrived. Thus it is vain for you to have come from Mechlin or Brussels, to have seen the _Magi_ and the _Calvary_, to have formed an exact and measured idea of Rubens, or even to have taken familiarities in examining him that have set you at your ease with him, for you cannot enter Notre Dame as you enter a museum.

It is three o'clock; the clock high up has just struck. Scarcely even a sacristan makes a sound in the tranquil, clean and clear naves, as Pieter Neefs has represented them, with an inimitable feeling for their solitude and grandeur. It is raining and the light is fading. Shadows and gleams succeed each other upon the two triptychs in their thin framing of brown wood fastened without any pomp to the cold and smooth walls of the transepts, and this proud painting only stands out the more amid the violent lights and obscurities contending around it. German copyists have placed their easels before the _Descent from the Cross_; there is nobody before the _Elevation to the Cross_. This simple fact expresses the world's opinion as to these two works.

They are greatly admired, almost unreservedly so, and the fact is rare in the case of Rubens, but the admiration is divided. The chief renown has fallen upon the _Descent from the Cross_. The _Elevation to the Cross_ has the gift of touching still more the impassioned, or more deeply convinced, friends of Rubens. No two works, in fact, could resemble each other less than these that were conceived at an interval of two years, that were inspired by the same effort of mind, and that, nevertheless, so plainly bear the marks of two separate tendencies. The date of the _Descent from the Cross_ is 1612; that of the _Elevation to the Cross_ is 1610. I insist upon the date, for it is important. Rubens was returning to Antwerp, and it was on his disembarkation, so to speak, that he painted them. His education was finished. At that moment he had even an excess of studies that were somewhat heavy for him and of which he was going to make free use once for all and then get rid of almost immediately. Of all the Italian masters he had consulted, each one, be it understood, gave him advice of a sufficiently exclusive nature. The hot-headed masters authorized him to dare greatly; the severe masters recommended him to keep himself under strong restraint.

His nature, character, and native faculties all tended to a division. The task itself exacted that he should make two parts of his beautiful gifts. He felt the expediency of this, took advantage of it, treated of the subjects in accordance with their spirit, and gave two contrary and two just ideas of himself: on the one hand the most magnificent example we possess of his wisdom, and on the other one of the most astonishing visions of his fire and ardour. To the personal inspiration of the painter add a very marked Italian influence and you will still better be able to explain to yourself the extraordinary value that posterity attaches to pages which may be regarded as his diploma works and which were the first public acts of his life as the head of a school.

I will tell you how this influence manifests itself and by what characteristics it may be recognized. But first it is enough for me to remark that it exists, in order that the physiognomy of the talent of Rubens may not lose any of its features at the moment when we examine it. This is not that he should be positively cramped in canonical formulæ in which others would find themselves imprisoned.

On the other hand, with what ease he moves among these formulæ, with what freedom he makes use of them, with what tact he disguises or confesses them, according as he takes pleasure in revealing the well-informed man or the novice. However, whatever he may do, we feel the _Romanist_ who has just spent some years on classic ground, who has just arrived and has not yet changed his atmosphere. There is some unknown quality remaining with him that reveals travel, such as a foreign odour about his clothes. It is certainly to this fine Italian scent that the _Descent from the Cross_ owes the extreme favour that it enjoys. For those indeed who would like Rubens to be somewhat as he is, but very much also as they imagine him, there is here a seriousness in youth, a frank and studious flower of maturity which is about to disappear and which is unique.

I need not describe the composition. You could not mention a more popular composition as a work of art or as an example of religious style. There is nobody who has not in his mind the ordering and the effect of the picture, its great central light cast against a dark background, its grandiose masses, its distinct and massive divisions. We know that Rubens got the first idea of it from Italy, and that he made no attempt to conceal the loan. The scene is powerful and grave. It acts on one from afar, it stands out strikingly upon a wall: it is serious and enforces seriousness. When we remember the carnage with which the work of Rubens is crimsoned, the massacres, the executioners torturing, martyring, and making their victims howl, we recognize that here we have a noble _execution_. Everything in it is restrained, concise, and laconic, as in a page of Holy Writ.

There are neither gesticulations, cries, horrors, nor too many tears. The Virgin hardly breaks into a single sob, and the intense suffering of the drama is expressed by scarce a gesture of inconsolable motherhood, a tearful face, or red eyes. The Christ is one of the most elegant figures that Rubens ever imagined for the painting of a God. It possesses some peculiar extended, pliant, and almost tapering grace, that gives it every natural delicacy and all the distinction of a beautiful academic study. It is subtly proportioned and in perfect taste: the drawing does not fall far short of the sentiment.

You have not forgotten the effect of that large and slightly hip-shot body, with its small, thin, and fine head slightly fallen to one side, so livid and so perfectly limpid in its pallor, neither shrivelled nor drawn, and from which all suffering has disappeared, as it descends with so much beatitude to rest for a moment among the strange beauties of the death of the just! Recollect how heavily it hangs and how precious it is to support, in what a lifeless attitude it glides along the sudarium, with what agonized affection it is received by the outstretched hands and arms of the women. Is there anything more touching? One of his feet, livid and pierced, encounters at the foot of the Cross the bare shoulder of Magdalen. It does not rest upon it, but grazes it. The contact is scarcely noticeable, we divine it rather than see it. It would have been profane to insist upon it, it would have been cruel not to have made us believe in it. All Rubens's furtive sensitiveness is in this imperceptible contact that says so many things, respects them all, and makes them affecting.

The sinner is admirable. She is incontestably the best piece of work in the picture, the most delicate, the most personal, one of the best figures of women, moreover, that Rubens ever executed in his career that was so fertile in feminine creations. This delicious figure has its legend; how should it not have, its very perfection having become legendary! It is probable that this beautiful maiden with the black eyes, with the firm glance, with the clear-cut profile, is a portrait, and the portrait is that of Isabella Brandt, whom he had married two years before, and who had also sat for him for the Virgin in the wing of the _Visitation_. However, while observing her ample figure, powdered hair, and plump proportions, we reflect what must some day be the splendid and individual charms of that beautiful Helen Fourment whom he is to marry twenty years later.

From his earliest to his latest years, one tenacious type seems to have taken up its abode in Rubens's heart; one fixed idea haunted his amorous and constant imagination. He delights in it, he completes it, he achieves it; to some extent he pursues it in his two marriages, just as he never ceases to repeat it throughout his works. There is always something both of Isabella and of Helen in the women whom Rubens painted from either one of them. In the first he puts a sort of preconceived trait of the second; into the second glides a kind of ineffaceable memory of the first. At the date of which we treat, he possesses the first and is inspired by her; the other is not yet born, and still he divines her. The future already mingles with the present; the real with the ideal. As soon as the image appears it has this double form. Not only is it exquisite, but not a feature is wanting. Does it not seem as if in thus fixing it from the first day, Rubens intended that neither he nor anyone else should forget it?