Chapter XI: Part II (4)

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This, the second and much enlarged edition of a volume published thirty years ago and long out of print, contains the fruits of the author’s researches, not only at Liége and in the Mosan towns, but also in many museums and private collections. ¶ In the first fifty pages he has brought together all the documentary evidence as to the introduction and progress of art in the principality, illustrating the same by reproductions of the paintings on the mutilated shrine of Saint Odilia at Kerniel, of miniatures from manuscripts in the British Museum, the Royal Library at Brussels, etc., and of the exquisite storied embroideries on the antependium from the church of Saint Martin at Liége, now in the Industrial Art Museum at Brussels. In the next three chapters the author treats of the Benedictine artists of Liége, of the Mosan contemporaries of the Van Eycks, and of the paintings executed in the fifteenth century, of which so little has escaped destruction. As to the painters who flourished in the sixteenth century there is fuller information, though there yet remains much to be done before the history of Joachim Patenir and Henry Bles can be cleared up and their works classified. Of Lambert Lombard and his pupils and followers the author gives us a full account, and from their time onwards to the end of the eighteenth century this volume contains a thoroughly complete history of the painters who flourished in the district and of the paintings they executed. We congratulate the author on the termination of this work, which, with the volume on sculpture and the plastic arts published by him in 1890, constitutes a very satisfactory and well-illustrated history of art in the principality of Liége.

W. H. J. W.

PERIODICALS

~Jahrbuch der königlich preussischen Kunstsammlungen~, 1903, 2.~ Heft~.--The article of most general interest in the current number is that by Drs. Ludwig and Bode on the picture of the Resurrection recently acquired by the Berlin gallery from Count Roncalli of Bergamo. The assumption that this is by Giovanni Bellini himself rests on the following evidence: The church of St. Michael, on the cemetery island of Venice, was so ruined in 1469 that the abbot of the Camaldulensian house to which it belonged began to rebuild it. In the year 1475 the patrician Marco Zorzi, of the Bertucci family, obtained permission to build and furnish a family chapel in the church. The chapel was dedicated to the Virgin, but in his mother’s will, dated 1479, it is already referred to as the chapel of the Resurrection. Then follows the testimony of later writers. Sansovino, 1581, describing the church, says, ‘La risurrezzione a olio fu del medisimo Gian Bellino.’ Ridolfi, 1648, describes the picture fully, and attributes it to Bellini. Boschini, 1664, calls it a Cima, an attribution which clung to the picture in St. Michael’s till 1810, when it disappeared. It will be noted that there is hitherto no proof that the Roncalli picture stood once in the chapel in question. That a composition of this kind by Bellini existed was already to be guessed from various motives copied in other pictures. The question remains whether this is the identical picture, and not, as has been hitherto thought, a late version by Basaiti, Previtali or Bartolommeo Veneto. On the other hand it is noted that Ridolfi’s account of the picture is so minute that one may assume that the Roncalli picture is either the actual one that stood in Zorzi’s chapel or an exact copy. The problem therefore resolves itself into the question of whether the existing picture is a copy or not. Drs. Ludwig and Bode are agreed that it is an original, and in spite of some curious points which do not precisely agree with any other existing Bellini we think they are right. The picture with which it has most affinity is the Transfiguration at Naples, to which for various reasons we may assign a date just a year or two previous to 1478, the date of this work. If this is correct the likeness to Basaiti, Cima and Bartolommeo Veneto is to be explained by the fact that this work exercised a profound influence on the rising generation of Venetian painters. It is to be noted also that we have here already the peculiar honeycombed rock formation which the Vicentine painters, Montagna in particular, afterwards employed. Whatever be the final verdict as to the authorship of the work, the authorities of the Berlin gallery are to be congratulated upon having secured one of the most imaginative compositions in the whole range of Venetian art.--R. E. F.

Dr. Bode writes on the work of Hercules Segers, whose pictures, long forgotten or ascribed to other masters, Rembrandt, Van Goyen, or Vermeer of Haarlem, have recently been rediscovered, mainly through the insight of Dr. Bode himself. The Berlin gallery has possessed since 1874 the only signed picture hitherto known; another signed work is now in the possession of Dr. Hofstede de Groot. These two, a second landscape lately acquired by the Berlin gallery, and a picture exhibited in London in 1901 under the name of Vermeer, but now the property of Herr Simon, are reproduced. Other pictures discussed in the text are a landscape ascribed to Rembrandt in the Uffizi and another, also under Rembrandt’s name, in the National Gallery of Scotland. A great part of the article is devoted to the etchings, the true starting-point of all our knowledge of Segers. About sixty of these are known, of which the Amsterdam cabinet has fifty, while very few other collections possess any considerable number. Several admirable facsimiles in colour accompany the article, and the interesting announcement is made that a publication of the entire work of Segers is contemplated, under the editorship of Prof. Jaro Springer. Almost all the etchings are landscapes, generally printed in colour on a prepared ground, and often finished by the artist with the brush. Dr. Bode discusses the question whether the wild mountain scenery depicted in most of them was invented by the artist or true to nature, and decides for the latter alternative. A great curiosity is the etching in colours of the Lamentation for Christ, copied by Segers from a wood-cut by Hans Baldung. An excellent reproduction is given of the impression recently acquired by the Berlin cabinet. Dr. Bode does not mention the fact that an impression was already known in the collection of King Frederick Augustus II at Dresden, where it passed for a drawing by Baldung till its true character was discerned some years ago by Prof. Lehrs.

C. D.

~L’Arte.~ Parts I-IV. 1903.--The publication of _L’Arte_, suspended owing to a strike at Rome, has been resumed, and we have received the first four parts for the current year. Signor Venturi appears to have finally discovered the authorship of the small bronze doors which close the reliquary containing St. Peter’s keys in S. Pietro in Vincoli. These, which have been variously praised as Pollajuolo’s and disparaged as Filarete’s, are really not Florentine at all, but by the Milanese Caradosso, working doubtless under Florentine influence. There are two replicas of the two bas reliefs on the doors in question. Both, though alike in the general composition, are curiously modified in some essential particulars which render the subjects unintelligible. One of these replicas is in the Louvre, where it is attributed to the Florentine school; the other, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is more rashly ascribed to Lorenzo Ghiberti, to whose style it does not conform at all. ¶ M. Marcel Reymond solves satisfactorily a puzzling question connected with the tomb of Onofrio Strozzi in the church of Sta. Trinità in Florence. This has been ascribed on documentary evidence to Piero di Niccolò, who was supposed to have executed it in 1418. In 1423 Piero di Niccolò executed at Venice the essentially gothic monument of Doge Mocenigo, while Donatello himself only arrived at a conception like that of the Strozzi tomb in his monument of Giovanni de’ Medici in 1429. On stylistic grounds there can be no doubt that the Strozzi tomb is nearly a decade later than the Medici tomb, and yet the documentary evidence has been hitherto allowed as authoritative. On closer examination, however, this appears to be quite inconclusive; it is a warning of the necessity for re-examining documents in the light of the evidence afforded by style. The Strozzi tomb may be safely considered to be no earlier than the close of the fourth decade of the century. It is either, M. Reymond thinks, by Donatello himself, or by some sculptor who carried out a design by him. ¶ The remains of Pisan domination in Sardinia are the subject of researches by Signor Dionigi Scano, who has had the good fortune to discover at Oristano a signed statue by Nino Pisano, together with a number of bas reliefs in which he traces Pisan influence. The very crude architectural settings of most of these, however, betray a strain of northern influence. Far finer than these are the thirteenth-century lion-head door handles in bronze which he reproduces. ¶ Dr. Seidlitz returns to the question of Zenale and Buttinone _à propos_ of Signor Malaguzzi Valeri’s interesting book on Lombard painters. He points out the impossibility of supposing, as Signor Valeri does, that the Castelbarco altarpiece in the Brera belongs to the fifties. The supposed 5 of the date must be a mutilated 8. In the main, however, he appears to have come independently to similar conclusions about the respective shares of Buttinone and Zenale in the great Treviglio altarpiece. He calls attention to the important picture by Zenale (the Circumcision) in the Louvre overlooked by the Italian writer, but by far the most interesting suggestion that he makes is that the strangely imaginative composition of the Adoration in the Ambrosian Library which Morelli described as an early Bramantino is by Buttinone himself. It must be admitted that in no other work does that artist display a freedom and originality of invention comparable to this, but the likenesses to his peculiarly uncouth style are certainly striking. We should like to call attention to the fact that most of these ideas were suggested some years ago by Mr. Herbert Cook in his catalogue to the Lombard exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. Both Dr. Seidlitz and Signor Valeri are acquainted with this work, but neither has had the courtesy to make full acknowledgement of Mr. Cook’s priority. ¶ Signor Francesco La Grassa-Patti writes on the works of the Della Robbia in Sicily. The full-length Madonna at Trapani he attributes to Andrea, though the coarse vigorous forms suggest Giovanni while still working in his father’s style as more likely. The work is described as Giovanni’s by Miss Cruttwell. The second is a tondo at Messina (Sta. Maria della Scala) which Miss Cruttwell describes as a school piece. This also is attributed by Signor Grassa-Patti to Andrea, while the one work for which Andrea’s authorship might be claimed, the Madonna del Cuscino at Palermo, is called a school piece. A fourth work is the Adoration in the church of S. Niccolò lo Gurgo at Palermo. This M. Reymond considers to be one of many replicas of the motive. The author makes no mention of Miss Cruttwell’s exhaustive researches, although, with the exception of the last, all these works have been fully and critically treated by her. ¶ Signor Gino Fogolari describes some wooden sculptures of the twelfth century at Carsoli and Alatri. Those at the latter place comprise a magnificent Madonna and Child, one of the finest specimens of the type which was usual in Italian sculpture of this period, and twelve has reliefs of the doors which originally closed the Madonna’s shrine. These are of interest as still possessing some of the original colouring and for their similarity in technique to the ivory work of the period. ¶ Dr. Romualdi describes an admirable plan which has been formed for making a complete _catalogue raisonné_ of all publications on the history of Italian art. The scheme is to treat the subject by means of regional committees, whose work will be united and revised by central committees at Florence and Rome. The importance of such a catalogue in a subject of which the literature has become so unwieldy cannot be overrated: the scheme deserves every encouragement. ¶ Signor Venturi replies at length to Dr. Julius von Schlosser’s views concerning the sketch-book attributed to Giusto of Padua in the National Gallery of Engravings at Rome, maintaining the correctness of his original attribution. ¶ Among the ‘miscellanea’ there are descriptions of a fourteenth-century pastoral staff in the cathedral at Treviso, which Signor Biscaro attributes to a Venetian goldsmith. He seems scarcely to explain the peculiarly French character of most of the forms. ¶ Signor Venturi gives a description with a collotype reproduction of the newly-discovered Jacopo di Barbari at Naples. It is evidently a striking picture in which the influence of Antonello da Messina strongly predominates. The two men represented in it are Luca Pacioli, the celebrated mathematician, and the artist himself, whose apparent age agrees with that indicated by the inscription, namely, twenty years. This, since the picture bears the date 1495, throws a new light on Barbari’s position in Venetian art. Signor Venturi also reproduces a drawing in the Piancastelli collection at Rome, which appears to be the original work by Timoteo Viti of which the head in the Taylorian at Oxford, hitherto thought to be an original, is a replica. If the reproductions are to be trusted, there can be no doubt about the superiority of the Roman drawing. Signor Toesca attributes the coarse picture of the Coronation of the Virgin in the Naples gallery (there ascribed to Matteo di Giovanni) to Christoforo Scacco. He also reproduces an Antoniazzo Romano in the depôt of the Uffizi. Signor Venturi maintains in a vehement but unconvincing argument his former opinion that the Resurrection which the Berlin gallery acquired recently from Count Roncalli at Bergamo is not by Giovanni Bellini, but by Bartolommeo Veneto. ¶ Signor P. D’Achiardi publishes a picture which is in the house of the cathedral chaplains at Pisa which has hitherto been supposed to be merely a school piece of Benozzi Gozzoli’s atelier, but which a recent restoration has shown to be worthy of the master. It is dated 1470, and is therefore one of the earliest of his Pisan works. Signor Manceri adduces a document which shows that Pietro di Bontate, who was supposed to have assisted Laurana in his works at Palermo, was not an artist but a stonemason.

~Gazette des Beaux Arts~, June.--M. Henri Cochin begins, in ‘Some reflections on the Salons,’ a delightful article which is none the worse for containing very little about the pictures and a good deal of general speculation about the aims which modern art has proposed to itself. He regrets that the present moment is one in which the public has to some extent lost confidence in its own omniscience, and that the artists are without any clearly formulated ideals to arouse their devotion or hatred. ¶ Owing to the activity of M. Paul Meurice, Paris is going to have yet another museum, that of Victor Hugo. In what was once the poet’s house in the Place Royale, there have been collected and arranged all kinds of records and mementos of the poet-politician’s career. Not the least important of these are the pen-and-ink drawings in which he often made the first record of scenes, elaborated afterwards in prose or verse. It is to these slight but by no means insignificant performances that M. Emile Berteaux devotes a serious study. There was, in fact, a time when Victor Hugo nearly turned artist; he got so far as to master the processes of etching and to produce one successful plate. But he realized the danger of this parergon interfering with his real work and never repeated the experiment. Nevertheless, to the end of his life he noted ideas or striking effects in pen-drawings of astonishing force and brilliance, on which he smudged a melodramatic chiaroscuro with a finger dipped in ink or coffee. The results cannot be treated as great works of art, but none the less every one of them proclaims the man of genius; nor are they unimportant for the understanding of Victor Hugo’s development, since the sombre mood of his later poems was already foreshadowed in these hasty improvisations. ¶ M. Moreau-Nélaton describes the genesis of one of Corot’s late works, the view of Sin-le-noble, now forming part of the Thomy-Thiéry bequest to the Louvre. M. Denis Roche begins an account of Dmitri Grigorévitch Lévitski, a little-known Russian portraitist of the eighteenth century, whose works have decided merit. A certain influence of contemporary Venetian art is apparent in his composition, but for the most part he was formed under the influence of French artists like Tocqué, whom the Empress Elizabeth invited to Russia in the middle of the century. The portrait of Diderot by Lévitski, which is reproduced here, shows that his feeling for character was keener than the average run of West European painters of his time. It is comparable to a Chardin rather than any of the more mannered masters of the day.

~Rassegna d’Arte~, June.--Signor Carlo Gamba describes two works of art in the royal villa of Castello; one, a Florentine picture (a Nativity) of about 1460, in which the influence of Baldovinetti is most apparent; the other a polychrome stucco attributed to Agostino di Duccio. The composition is undoubtedly his, but the type of face is longer and more accented than is usual with that master. ¶ Signor Antonio Gobbo points out the great differences between the ancient methods of mosaic work and those which obtain in the modern factories at Venice and elsewhere. He insists rightly on the necessity of doing the mosaic _in situ_, instead of reversed on a cartoon, on the desirability of a restricted colour-scheme and of a less mechanically even fabrication of the tesserae. It is interesting to have explained thus the extreme discomfort one experiences in front of most modern mosaics. ¶ Signor Annoni describes some remains of fifteenth-century work in the northern suburb of Milan, the most interesting being a fresco which he attributes to Borgognone at Garignano. ¶ Signor Antonio della Rovere endeavours to prove by Morellian methods that a feeble and late sixteenth-century Venetian picture, representing St. Jerome, is by none other than Giorgione. As he relies for his proof on the attribution to Giorgione of the Three Ages in the Pitti, and a well-known Torbido in the Venice academy, his extraordinary result is not entirely the fault of the method he employs. ¶ The Antonello da Messina of Christ at the Column in the museum at Piacenza is reproduced in this number. It is evidently a work of the highest importance for our knowledge of this great and still scarcely understood master. In conception and execution alike it surpasses all the numerous works by Solario and others that it inspired.

~The Architectural Review~, June, contains an account of Orvieto cathedral by Mr. Langton Douglas. He effectively disparages Commendatore Fumi’s theory that the original design for the church which follows the plan of a Roman basilica was by Arnolfo di Cambio, and attributes it to ‘some mediocre master of the conservative Roman school.’ With regard to the façade and the importance of Lorenzo Maitano’s work at Orvieto he is in accordance with Burckhardt and Bode. He has done a real service to students in reproducing the two beautiful designs of the façade by the great Sienese master. In discussing the sculptures of the façade he shows excellent reasons for assuming, as was already done by Burckhardt and Bode, that Maitano was the master sculptor. We are rather surprised to find him however admitting M. Marcel Reymond’s contention that Andrea da Pontedera also had a hand in the work, though at a much earlier date than that writer supposed. The work, we think, is throughout thinner, slighter, and of a more facile elegance than the known works of Andrea Pisano. Mr. Langton Douglas tends to exaggerate the indifference of previous writers to Sienese sculpture: the list of works which he gives, with the remark that they have ‘entirely escaped the notice of M. Reymond and other writers upon Tuscan sculpture,’ is more completely given in Bode’s ‘Italienische Plastik’. ¶ For the rest the _Architectural Review_ is devoted to contemporary works, among which we may call attention to Mr. Gilbert Scott’s remarkable designs for the Liverpool Cathedral competition. We may hope that even now it is not too late for the committee to revise their verdict and give us the chance of seeing the execution of a really vital and original gothic design.

The May number of the ~Emporium~ (~Bergamo~) which did not reach us in time for our last issue contains an interesting account by Signor Frizzoni of the Tadini gallery at Lovere. The gallery which, with the immense modern palace that contains it, was left to the remote little town of Lovere by Count Tadini, has, it must be admitted, a very small proportion of notable works, but since Signor Frizzoni has rearranged it, its value for the lover of art is considerably enhanced. It is no longer necessary to wander through innumerable seventeenth-century copies in order to pick out the few works that demand serious attention. And these few are indeed of such excellence that no one need regret the time spent in coasting up the winding shores of the Lake of Iseo in order to visit it. By far the most remarkable of these is the incomparable Jacopo Bellini of the Madonna and Child, perhaps the finest existing work of this rare master. Besides this there is Bordone’s greatest masterpiece, a Madonna and Child enthroned with SS. Christopher and George below--a work of almost Giorgionesque splendour, though it is needless to say more florid in taste and more agitated in line. The curtain suspended behind by flying putti reminds one for a moment of Lotto’s S. Bernardino altarpiece. Another fine picture is the portrait of a knight by Parmigiano, while in a picture which the catalogue describes as ‘un bellissimo quadro di Pietro Perugino,’ it is possible to recognize the forms of an early Veronese master, probably Domenico Morone himself. We can only hope that the trustees of the Tadini bequest will carry out Signor Frizzoni’s suggestion and have this picture, which has suffered from clumsy repainting, restored so far as possible to its original condition. An early Venetian picture, falsely signed Cornelio Fiore, and attributed, quite rightly we think, to Lorenzo Veneziano by the author, and a crudely-painted Pietà, signed by Girolamo da Treviso, are other original works.

R. E. F.

BOOKS RECEIVED

~Aubrey Beardsley.~ By A. E. Gallatin. Godfrey A. S. Wieners, New
York; Elkin Mathews, London. 20s. net.

~The Arts in Early England.~ By G. Baldwin Brown. Murray. Two
Volumes. 16s. each net.

~Chinese Porcelain (Vol. II.).~ By W. G. Gulland. Chapman and Hall.
10s. 6d.

~The History of Johnny Quae Genus.~ By Thomas Rowlandson. (Reprint.)
Methuen. 3s. 6d

~The Tour of Dr. Syntax.~ By Thomas Rowlandson. (Reprint.) Methuen.
3s. 6d.

~Illustrations of the Book of Job.~ By William Blake. (Reprint.)
Methuen. 3s. 6d.

~Memoirs of the Life of John Mytton.~ By Nimrod. (Reprint.) Methuen.
3s. 6d.

~Stradanus te Florence.~ By J. A. Orbaan. Nijgh and Van Ditman,
Rotterdam, 3s. 6d.

~L’Étude du Blason en Orient.~ By Jacoub Artin Pacha. Quaritch. £3 3s.

~The Vision of Dante~ (Cary’s translation). Newnes. 3s. 6d.

~Tintoretto.~ By J. B. S. Holborn. Bell & Son. 5s. (Great Masters
Series).

~History of the Pewterers’ Company.~ Two Vols. By C. Welch. Blades,
East, and Blades.

~The Norfolk Broads.~ By W. A. Dutt. Methuen. 21s.

~Catalogue of Engraved Portraits.~ Myers and Rogers.

~Il Duomo di San Giovanni.~ By Mospignotti. Alinari (Florence.) 5
lire.

~Fra Filippo Lippi.~ By J. B. Supino. Alinari. 10 lire.

~La Pittura Veneziana.~ By P. Molmenti. Alinari. 10 lire.

~The World’s Children.~ By Mortimer Menpes. A. and C. Black. 20s.

~L’Epopée Flamande.~ By Eugène Baie. J. Lebègue et Cie (Brussels).
3.50 f.

~The Works of Ruskin, Vol. III.~ (Library Edition.) G. Allen. 21s.

~Dante’s Divine Comedy.~ By Leigh Hunt. Newnes. 2s. 6d.

~The Shakespeare Country Illustrated.~ Newnes. 3s.

~Peintres de Jadis et d’Aujourd’hui.~ Perrin et Cie (Paris). 6 francs.

~Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft.~ Berlin.

~Academy Notes.~ Wells Gardner & Co. 1s.

~Royal Academy Pictures.~ Cassel. 7s. 6d.

~Über Otto Oseiner.~ By Johannes Guthman. Hiersemann (Leipzig).

~Catalogue of Japanese Wood Carvings, etc., in the Boston Museum of
Fine Arts.~

MAGAZINES.

~Gazette des Beaux Arts.~ Durendal (Brussels). Onze Kunst (Amsterdam
and Antwerp). L’Art (Paris). La Presse Universelle (Antwerp). L’Arte
(Rome). Rassegna d’Arte. The Architectural Review

A NEW MEZZOTINT

We have received from Messrs. P. and D. Colnaghi & Co. an impression of a mezzotint by Mr. H. Scott Bridgwater after Raeburn’s portrait of Mrs. Home Drummond of Blair Drummond, which they have just published. Raeburn loses nothing in Mr. Bridgwater’s translation, indeed the mezzotint has greater merit as a work of art than the original picture; we have seen no modern engraving in mezzotint which we can regard as its equal. Mr. Bridgwater has produced a work worthy to rank with the best mezzotint engraving of the eighteenth century--with the work even of such a master of the art as J. R. Smith; and this portrait of Mrs. Drummond is very much superior to some of the eighteenth-century mezzotints for which absurd prices are being paid by people who regard everything that comes from the eighteenth century with indiscriminating admiration. We do not believe that anyone of taste and judgement, who was not blinded by the eighteenth-century glamour, could seriously maintain that any mezzotint of Valentine Green’s is to be compared as a work of art with Mr. Bridgwater’s latest work. We have little enough to boast of in modern artistic production; let us at least recognize good work when we meet with it; the best work of modern artists has been done in black and white, and most of the modern works of art that are really worth collecting are drawings or etchings; to these we can now add some mezzotints, among which Mr. Bridgwater’s Mrs. Drummond is perhaps the most notable. The issue is restricted to 350 impressions, all artist’s proofs.

❧ CORRESPONDENCE ❧

MR. JULIUS WERNHER’S TITIAN

~Sir~,

One of your subscribers in Venice has drawn my attention to an article in your magazine (April number, p. 185), written by Mr. Herbert Cook, and illustrating a magnificent portrait by Titian, in the possession of Mr. Julius Wernher. Your subscriber tells me that similarly insufficiently described Italian portraits are not uncommon in English private collections, though, of course, not through the fault of the collectors, as it is impossible to obtain sufficient information from printed books only. We here in Venice are naturally better off, and the public and private archives and the manuscripts in the libraries offer much material to one who is experienced to handle it, and yield in most cases sufficient information. So your subscriber has asked me to show in the case of this Giacomo Doria what we can achieve here. ¶ To the student of palaeography it is not a matter of opinion, but of certainty, that the inscription reads: Giacomo Doria _quondam_ Agostini, that means Giacomo Doria, son of the late Agostino. The dress is not the habit of an Augustinian friar. In the famous concert by Giorgione, in the Palazzo Pitti, the ecclesiastic playing the clavi-cembalo is an Augustinian; he is clean shaven, has the large tonsure, and wears a mozetta. It is impossible to decide by looking at the reproduction alone whether Giacomo wears Venetian or Genoese dress, everything being entirely black. According to Crollalanza’s ‘Dizionario storico-blasonico,’ there were two families of the name of Doria--one in Genoa, and one in the Veneto. Mr. Cook has not been able to decide to which branch Giacomo belonged. ¶ Now Signor Comm. Carlo dei Conti Bullo, at Venice, has a private archive containing many important documents concerning the history of the town of Chioggia. These documents show that the war between Venice and Genoa, called the war of Chioggia, led to the settlement of several important Genoese families in Chioggia. Amongst these are mentioned the Bonivento, the Cibo, the Gandolfo and the Doria. ¶ The Chioggia branch of the Doria family still exists; its present head is Signor Giovanni Battista Doria, a draughtsman in the Genio Civile in Venice. This gentleman has in his possession a genealogical tree, compiled and signed by two canons of the cathedral of Chioggia, which proves his descent from Victor, son of Giovanni, born in the year 1480, and founder of the Chioggia branch. But in this tree no Giacomo di Agostino occurs. Now Signor Doria has another tree, although not a signed one, which shows how Victor di Giovanni is attached to the main trunk of the family in Genoa. In this tree the looked-for Giacomo di Agostino occurs; he is therefore a Genoese and not a Venetian. ¶ We give here the interesting part of this tree:

We see from this tree that Giacomo was a man of eminence, a brother of a doge, and the father of two doges of the republic of Genoa. His personality is of particular interest to the Germans, as his nearest relations play an important part in Schiller’s great tragedy, ‘The Conspiracy of Fiesco.’ His cousins Vettor and Nicolò settled in Chioggia, and, probably on the occasion of a visit to his relatives, Titian painted his portrait. Signor Doria is not certain as to the signification of the dates occurring in this tree, probably they mean the year of birth. Mr. Cook puts the portrait about the year 1523, but I am afraid it will have to be put to a considerably later date. ¶ This is all we can do in Venice; for further information about Giacomo one would have to search the documents in the archives of Genoa. ¶ Curiously enough, Mr. Cook has not a word to say about the arms which one can faintly recognize in the upper left-hand corner of the reproduction. I give below the arms of the Genoese Dorias, and those of the Dorias of Chioggia. ¶ From what I am able to make out, the arms represented on the picture are the Genoese arms. I shall be happy to search for arms occurring on Italian portraits in English collections, and collect information about the persons represented, if printed books fail to give the necessary help.

Yours truly,
~Giovanni De Pellegrini~.
Studio Araldico, Campo San Maurizio,
Venice.

1 2
3 4

No. 1 is the shield of the Dorias of Genoa, taken from ‘Il Annuario della Nobiltà Italiana.’

Nos. 2, 3, 4 are shields of the Dorias of Chioggia; No. 2 is carved on a house in the _calle di S. Nicolò_ at Chioggia; No. 3 is carved in the town hall of Chioggia and on a house on the Canal Lombardo; No. 4 is carved in marble on a chimney of the _casa Doria_ at S. Andrea. All three shields are given in the Ravagnan MS. belonging to the municipality of Chioggia.]

The Great Executioner, from the mezzotint by Prince Rupert after Spagnoletto, in the collection of His Majesty the King.]

THE LOWESTOFT PORCELAIN FACTORY, AND THE CHINESE PORCELAIN MADE FOR THE EUROPEAN MARKET DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY[86]

❧ WRITTEN BY L. SOLON ❧

Mr. W. Chaffers is responsible for the spread of a theory regarding the Lowestoft factory and its productions, which, after it had been provisionally endorsed by the majority of collectors, turned out to be one of the worst mystifications recorded in ceramic history. It must be conceded, in mitigation of the offence, that seldom had such a crop of apparently admissible evidence turned up to substantiate an ill-grounded belief. ¶ On a visit that the author of ‘Marks and Monograms,’ in quest of information, paid to the town of Lowestoft, he came across numerous pieces of porcelain of very distinctive character, bearing the crest or initials of the old families in which they had long been preserved, and all of which were said by their possessors to have been made in the local factory that existed at one time. He concluded, naturally enough, that he was on the way to the discovery of a most important and so far unsuspected centre of production--a too-hasty conclusion that a prejudiced course of investigation, unfortunately, came to strengthen. ¶ The ware that he soon felt himself warranted to call ‘Lowestoft porcelain’ bore, it is true, decorations of European design, but was no other than the inferior oriental china that the East India companies threw wholesale upon the market during the eighteenth century. In building up his lame theory Chaffers had neglected to take into consideration a few points of primary importance. ¶ All the ancient inhabitants of the town who could remember anything of the extinct factory agreed in saying that it was a small place, with only one biscuit oven and one enamelling kiln, and that at the best of times the number of persons it employed did not exceed seventy. Now, if the inquirer had not willingly lost sight of the fact that the very same kind of porcelain as that of which he was endeavouring to localize the origin was commonly found in every country which had had commercial intercourse with the east, not only in Europe, but also in America--where Boston and Salem were the centres of a large importation trade--and that many ancient families inhabiting the sea-port towns of those countries boast the possession of tea or dinner services of similar china, emblazoned with the arms or inscribed with the initials of an ancestor who had obtained them from the East Indies; if he had not conveniently forgotten that odd specimens of the ware are found in every collection and curiosity shop at home and abroad, then he might have suspected that such a colossal supply could only have come from a manufacturing centre of amazing magnitude, and not from a small factory at work for a few years on the coast of England. He also failed to observe that the paste of the china was manifestly of oriental character, and that there is no record of hard porcelain having ever been made at Lowestoft. ¶ On the other hand, a coarse kind of soft china, usually painted in underglaze blue, has been traced as the undeniable product of the Lowestoft factory, and a sufficient number of examples of that class can now be produced to dispel any doubt as to the precise description of the ware that was made there, and to put an end to all controversy. ¶ To the facility that the situation of Lowestoft offered for trading with Holland by way of Yarmouth must be attributed the existence of a petty company of merchants who joined to the importation of Delft-faïence the manufacture, on a small scale, of a pottery of the same description. White and blue faïence pieces, inscribed with local names and dated as early as 1755, seem to indicate that the pottery-works were in operation about that time. The making of soft china was added shortly afterwards. A heap of discarded plaster moulds was unearthed from the site of the old works in 1902; it included moulds for embossed sauce-boats and plain globular teapots; upon one of these latter, the date 1762 was incised in the plaster. The globular tea-pot made in that mould is reproduced on the accompanying plate. In the same year a queer, nine-sided ink-pot was manufactured; it bears a pseudo-Chinese ornamentation in underglaze blue, with the monogram ‘R.B. 1762.’ Robert Browne, for whom the piece was painted and inscribed, was the head of the firm till 1771. This unimpeachable testimony of the true style of the Lowestoft fabrication is now in the possession of Mr. Arthur Crisps, in whose collection are preserved six other ink-pots of the same shape, together with many other genuine pieces, decorated in the same manner, and bearing dates ranging from 1762 to 1782. Among these may be mentioned a tea service which has the name ‘Eliza^{th} Buckle,’ and the date 1768, painted in blue. It was executed by Robert Allen, a nephew of the worthy dame, who was still serving his apprenticeship, but in after times became the manager of the works. Also a number of small articles bearing the words ‘A trifle from Lowestoft’ or ‘A trifle from Yarmouth.’ None of these specimens have anything in common with the so-called Lowestoft china. ¶ A family tradition discloses the way in which porcelain making was introduced at Lowestoft. It is reported that Robert Browne, anxious to master a process unknown to him and from which he expected great results, repaired to London disguised as a workman, and in that capacity took employment in one of the china factories, either Bow or Chelsea. The discipline of former years had somewhat relaxed in these establishments, and he had no difficulty in worming out from one of the foremen, in exchange for adequate remuneration, the secret of the mixture, with instructions about practical manipulations. The object he had in view appears to have been most easily attained; scarcely three weeks had elapsed when he returned to his own works, provided with sufficient information to start china-making at once, without calling any outsider to his assistance. It is needless to observe that what he learned in this manner did not put him in the position of producing hard porcelain, and that he could not have made any on this basis. ¶ As it stands now the history of the Lowestoft works is a short one to tell. A better knowledge of the exact nature of the owners’ business might have been obtained from an examination of the papers and account books of the old firm; they may or may not be still in existence; at any rate, their contents have never been investigated. We know very little besides the fact that fritt porcelain was made for the first time in 1762, and that the factory was closed in 1803. This article will, however, have fulfilled its purpose if it establishes, once for all, not so much what was the true Lowestoft ware, but what it was not. One may well wonder how it came to pass that the name of the obscure Lowestoft factory could ever have been mentioned in connection with a particular ware which, in every country where the unmistakable specimens of it are met with in large quantities, is recognized as being of oriental provenance. As no conjecture has so far been advanced in answer to that query I will venture to present a not improbable solution of the problem.

IN THE COLLECTION OF MR. GEORGE HARDING]

FRANKS COLL. B.M.]

That they never manufactured such a porcelain at Lowestoft has no longer to be demonstrated; it remains to be proved that they sold it, and that the misconception as to its origin arose from no other cause. We must remember, in the first instance, that the proprietors of the works were also ship-owners, conducting a small trade with Holland. They exported English clays and raw materials for the use of the Delft potters, and brought back, in return, articles of Dutch faïence, often painted with names and inscriptions, for which they accepted commissions from private customers. We know, next, that Rotterdam was the centre of the mighty commerce carried on between Holland and China. It may, then, be fairly assumed that while engaged in the trade of common Delft ware, they conceived the idea of entering into communication with the wholesale importers of Chinese porcelain from whom they could purchase large supplies, and establishing in England a highly-remunerative branch of business by underselling the East India company. ¶ It was customary with the Dutch firms to send over to their foreign settlements shapes and designs obtained from European sources, to be reproduced by native hands. Models from Dresden, Sèvres, and even from Leeds or the Staffordshire potteries, were constantly copied in oriental porcelain. The Lowestoft people did what all other merchants had done before them, and through the same channel forwarded to China the designs of coats-of-arms, English mottoes, and initials that were to be painted on the porcelain they had undertaken to supply. In the Henry Willett collection is an armorial plate decorated in the usual Indo-European style, and inscribed, at the back, with its certificate of origin: CANTON ~IN~ CHINA 24th Jan. 1791. Commissions of that kind were received from the leading families of the neighbourhood and duly executed; hence the number of local patronymics that Chaffers noticed on the porcelain in the possession of many inhabitants of the town, who honestly believed that it had been made by the very men from whom it had been purchased. ¶ In 1770 the business had taken sufficient extension to induce the partners to open a warehouse in Queen Street, Cheapside. Their agent, Clark Dunford, inserted in the London papers an announcement in which he advertised ‘a large selection of Lowestoft china.’ We possess no information as to what may have been the exact description of the goods advertised under that name, but we may safely surmise that it was something superior to ‘A trifle from Lowestoft’ or any of the articles we know to have been the staple production of the works. It seems that a more attractive exhibition might have been formed in the show-room by a stock of Chinese porcelain imported by the Lowestoft company. ¶ I feel convinced that conclusive proofs of this elucidation of the Lowestoft puzzle will one day come to light; in the meantime, it cannot be denied that it is strongly supported by the following facts: It is recorded, on good authority, that the ruin of the company was caused by the wreck of one of their vessels carrying a cargo of porcelain, and the burning, by the French army, of the warehouse they had established at Rotterdam. The idea that the enormous amount of ware required to load a vessel and to fill a large warehouse in Rotterdam, not to speak of the one in London, could have been supplied by a one-oven factory, is too ludicrous to be entertained for one moment, and it may be dismissed without further comment. ¶ It has been suggested that the Lowestoft painters may have decorated ware imported from China in the white. By reason of the ubiquity of the porcelain decorated in the accredited style, and the small number of hands employed at the factory, such a suggestion is equally untenable. A hard porcelain teapot, unmistakably painted by a Chinese hand, which is marked ‘Allen, Lowestoft,’ is reproduced on the opposite page. Robert Allen was manager of the works up to the last. When they closed he set up a small china shop in the town, decorating himself part of the articles he sold. His supply was drawn from various sources, including oriental. Far from being deceived by such misleading testimonies, we may only infer from this tea-pot that the dealer was wont to affix his name to all that passed through his hands, even upon such pieces as had been decorated abroad. This curious specimen is now in the Victoria and Albert museum. ¶ The so-called Lowestoft style is characterized by sprays and garlands of flowers, in which two peculiar pink and purple colours play a conspicuous part, and by scalloped borders of the scale or trellis patterns. Similar designs appear on the early china and earthenware of Staffordshire. The last partisans of the Chaffers theory--for all the offshoots of the mystification have not yet been fully eradicated--believe that such pieces afford irrefutable examples of the Lowestoft original production. This is an error that must be discarded with the others. To imitate Chinese decoration has always been the golden rule of the English potter; just as he had reproduced the fine Nankin porcelain, he also copied the quasi-European ware manufactured for exportation by the East India company, and this all the more readily that it could be easily and cheaply produced. The well-known scale borders and the sprays of pink and purple roses occur frequently on the early china of Minton, Spode and other makers. These designs were obviously taken from the Chinese importations, and did not originate in the Potteries any more than they originated at Lowestoft. ¶ From the few authenticated specimens that have come under the collector’s notice we gather that the paste of the genuine Lowestoft porcelain is coarse, semi-opaque, and of a dingy white; the glaze is speckled with bubbles and minute black spots, which denote a rather imperfect manufacture. It is poorly decorated, and under these conditions we understand that it was not preciously preserved in the households; at all events, it has now become very rare. No mark was ever used at the factory, and the specific character of the ware is not sufficiently pronounced to allow us to use such undoubted examples as we possess as a means of identifying those which may have escaped destruction.

TITIAN’S PORTRAIT OF THE EMPRESS ISABELLA

❧ WRITTEN BY GEORG GRONAU[87] ❧

About the middle of the year 1543, somewhere between June 20 and 25, a meeting of Paul III and Charles V was arranged at Busseto between Parma and Cremona with a view to the settlement of the political differences outstanding at that date. In the train of the pope came Titian, who on every occasion when the emperor set foot on Italian soil took the opportunity of paying his addresses to the monarch. On this occasion, too, the emperor had a commission for him; Titian was instructed to paint a portrait of the dead empress. From Aretino’s letters--which, apart from their personal fascination which no reader of them is able to resist, are second to none as a source of information on the life of the great painter--a few further details of the incident are to be gleaned, for some days later Aretino, in the company of Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino and of the Venetian ambassadors, met the emperor near Peschiera in the course of his journey to Germany. It was one of the red letter days in Messer Pietro’s life, and, fulfilled with vain-glory, he was never tired of talking of the marked consideration wherewith, if his chronicle is to be trusted, the emperor received him. On this occasion, when portraiture became the topic of conversation, Charles referred to the portrait of his wife that he had given to Titian at Busseto, and told Aretino to tell his godfather that it was a very good likeness, though the work of a painter of small merit.[88] From Aretino’s letters we glean further particulars. In October 1544 he addresses a letter to the emperor wherein he extols the completed picture in such high-flown phrases as to baffle translation.[89] ‘In defiance of Death, he has called her back to life by the inspiration of his colours, so that God possesses her for the first, Charles for the second time.’ Although his words sound as if he were speaking of a finished picture, Titian, it would appear, did not dispatch the picture to the emperor until about a year later. In October 1545 he informed the monarch that he had handed the two portraits at which he had been working with all the diligence of which he was capable, over to Mendoza to be forwarded.[90] A few months later he was writing again from Rome, whither he had gone at the bidding of the Farnesi, to say that he had delivered his own portrait of the empress, ‘together with the other which had been given to me to copy,’ to Don Diego.[91] And he adds: ‘If I hear that it finds favour I shall feel the greatest satisfaction; but in the contrary event, I should prefer to improve it in such a manner as to content your majesty if our Lord God vouchsafes me to be able to come to bring a picture of Venus by me,’ etc. ¶ A little more than two years later Titian arrived at Augsburg at the summons of the emperor, who on this occasion wished once again to see himself portrayed by his favourite painter, this time as the conqueror of the Protestant princes, uplifted and on horseback. It involved a long sojourn. Towards the end of it, on September 1, 1548, Titian wrote to Granvella to explain his prospects to him, and in this letter enumerates the pictures he had done for the emperor, among them ‘The empress alone and the one of the emperor and empress.’ Here a little difficulty arises. Has Titian then painted a single portrait of the empress on two occasions, one between 1543 and 1545, the other in 1548? Or, on the other hand, is the work referred to in this letter one and the same with the earlier portrait, and did Titian, as a matter of fact, work it up again? It is impossible to speak with any degree of certainty, but as the Spanish inventories always speak of one portrait only we may assume that the latter hypothesis is the more likely to be correct. ¶ While the double portrait has been lost, the picture of the empress has found a place in that incomparable collection of Titian’s works which the Prado gallery in Madrid comprises. It is one of Titian’s most important works; perhaps, indeed, it takes the first place among his portraits of women. Never is his taste more exquisite than here. Its courtly splendour strikes one as a matter of course. In the midst of glorious colour--red and white--the pale, somewhat colourless face stands out framed by its fair reddish hair; the hand clasps a breviary. A window to the right opens on a landscape scene, one of those glimpses of Nature such as Titian had the secret of conjuring up with his brush with such incomparable art. No one looking at the picture would ever be able to suspect how it was painted; that its painter had never seen his model with his own eyes. It was no uncommon thing, by the way, for Titian to paint the portraits of people whom he did not even know by sight. He was proud of his skill of being able to recognize the characteristic traits of a man or woman even from another artist’s work.[92] ¶We can, however, only realize the work of genius for which this portrait of Isabella stands when we compare it with the picture with which the emperor had furnished him, that portrait by ‘a painter of small merit.’ The picture itself has, it is true, been wholly lost, but a copy of it has recently come to light in Florence, and is reproduced in these pages for the first time. That we are not mistaken in assuming it to be a replica of the original from which Titian worked will be proved by the complete coincidence of all the principal characteristics of the picture in Madrid with the one before us. In the Florentine picture the empress is wearing a black robe with white puffed sleeves, a great deal of jewelry, and is holding a spray of foliage in her hand. The picture is, for the most part, sombre in tone, and the face stands out most effectively in its pallor. It has that diaphanous whiteness noticeable in anæmic people. The dull reddish hair frames it heavily. The background is a grey green; in a niche, over which a dull red curtain is draped, the symbol of the exalted rank of the sitter, the imperial crown, is represented. To judge from its style this picture dates back to a Flemish master, though, with the somewhat scanty inherent evidence available, it is impossible to suggest the name of any particular artist. ¶ The picture originates from Bologna, where it was in the possession of the Pepoli family. That in itself is interesting, for we know that Isabella’s sister, Beatrice, duchess of Savoy, had taken up her quarters in the Pepoli palace during the rejoicings in 1530 in celebration of Charles V’s coronation, and that it was the scene of a brilliant ball which the emperor honoured with his presence. It would be well within the bounds of possibility, therefore, that the portrait of the empress, who had been prevented (she had been confined a short time previously) from coming to Bologna, had passed into possession of the Pepoli as a present at first hand, either from the emperor or from the duchess. A replica, with a few trivial distinctions, of the picture is entered in the inventory of the house of Farnese (about 1680). In this the left hand is resting on the back of the chair.[93]

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The Burlington magazineChapter XI: Part II (4)

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