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HANDBOOK TO THE NATIONAL GALLERY

THE NATIONAL GALLERY is open to the Public on week-days throughout the
year. On MONDAYS, TUESDAYS, WEDNESDAYS, and SATURDAYS _admission is
free_, and the Gallery is open during the following hours:--

  January          From 10 A.M. until 4 P.M.

  February       } From 10 A.M. until dusk.
  March          }

  April          }
  May            }
  June           }
  July           } From 10 A.M. until 6 P.M.
  August         }
  September      }

  October        }
  November       } From 10 A.M. until dusk.
  December       }

On THURSDAYS and FRIDAYS (_Students' Days_) the Gallery is open to the
Public _on payment of Sixpence each person_, from 11 A.M. to 4 P.M. in
winter, and from 11 A.M. to 5 P.M. in summer.

On SUNDAYS the Gallery is open, free, from 2 P.M. till dusk, or 6 P.M.
(according to the season).

--> _Persons desirous of becoming Students should address the Secretary
and Keeper, National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, S.W._

The NATIONAL GALLERY OF BRITISH ART ("Tate Gallery") is open under the
same regulations, and during the same hours, as those given above,
except that _Students' Days_ are Tuesdays and Wednesdays.




  A POPULAR HANDBOOK TO THE NATIONAL GALLERY

  INCLUDING BY SPECIAL PERMISSION

  NOTES COLLECTED FROM THE WORKS OF JOHN RUSKIN

  VOLUME I.--FOREIGN SCHOOLS


  COMPILED BY
  E. T. COOK

  WITH PREFACE BY JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., D.C.L.

  EIGHTH EDITION

  MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
  ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
  1922

      A picture which is worth buying is also worth seeing. Every
      noble picture is a manuscript book, of which only one copy
      exists, or ever can exist. A National Gallery is a great
      library, of which the books must be read upon their shelves
      (RUSKIN: _Arrows of the Chace_, i. 71).

    There, the long dim galleries threading,
      May the artist's eye behold
    Breathing from the "deathless canvass"
      Records of the years of old:

    Pallas there, and Jove, and Juno,
      "Take" once more their "walks abroad,"
    Under Titian's fiery woodlands
      And the saffron skies of Claude:

    There the Amazons of Rubens
      Lift the failing arm to strike,
    And the pale light falls in masses
      On the horsemen of Vandyke;

    And in Berghem's pools reflected
      Hang the cattle's graceful shapes,
    And Murillo's soft boy-faces
      Laugh amid the Seville grapes;

    And all purest, loveliest fancies
      That in poet's soul may dwell,
    Started into shape and substance
      At the touch of Raphael.

    Lo! her wan arms folded meekly,
      And the glory of her hair,
    Falling as a robe around her,
      Kneels the Magdalen in prayer;

    And the white-robed Virgin-mother
      Smiles, as centuries back she smiled,
    Half in gladness, half in wonder,
      On the calm face of her Child:--

    And that mighty Judgment-vision
      Tells how men essayed to climb
    Up the ladder of the ages,
      Past the frontier-walls of Time;

    Heard the trumpet-echoes rolling
      Thro' the phantom-peopled sky,
    And the still Voice bid this mortal
      Put on immortality.

  CALVERLEY.

[Illustration]




CONTENTS


                                                           PAGE

  PREFACE BY JOHN RUSKIN                                    vii

  GENERAL INTRODUCTION, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE
  NATIONAL GALLERY                                            x

  GUIDE TO THE GALLERY AND PLAN OF THE ROOMS                xxv

  INTRODUCTIONS TO THE SCHOOLS OF PAINTING:

    THE EARLY FLORENTINE SCHOOL                               1

    THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL                                     8

    THE SIENESE SCHOOL                                       14

    THE LOMBARD SCHOOL                                       16

    THE FERRARESE SCHOOL                                     19

    THE UMBRIAN SCHOOL                                       22

    THE VENETIAN SCHOOL                                      25

    THE PADUAN SCHOOL                                        32

    THE LATER ITALIAN SCHOOLS                                34

    THE EARLY FLEMISH AND THE GERMAN SCHOOLS                 38

    THE DUTCH SCHOOL                                         43

    THE LATER FLEMISH SCHOOL                                 47

    THE SPANISH SCHOOL                                       48

    THE FRENCH SCHOOL                                        51

  NUMERICAL CATALOGUE, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE
  NOTES                                                      55

  PICTURES ON LOAN                                          749

  COPIES FROM OLD MASTERS                                   752

  THE ARUNDEL SOCIETY'S COLLECTION                          757

  SCULPTURES AND MARBLES                                    770

  APPENDIX I. INDEX LIST OF PAINTERS (_with the subjects of
  their pictures_)                                          771

  APPENDIX II. INDEX LIST OF PICTURES                       791

  _First Edition printed 1888._
  _Second Edition printed 1889._
  _Third Edition printed 1890._
  _Fourth Edition printed 1893._
  _Fifth Edition printed 1897._
  _Sixth Edition printed 1901._
  _Seventh Edition, Vol. I. printed 1909._
  _Eighth Edition, Vol. I. printed 1912._
  _Seventh Edition, Vol. II. printed 1912._
  _Re-issue 1922._

[Illustration]




PREFACE BY JOHN RUSKIN


So far as I know, there has never yet been compiled, for the
illustration of any collection of paintings whatever, a series of notes
at once so copious, carefully chosen, and usefully arranged, as this
which has been prepared, by the industry and good sense of Mr. Edward
T. Cook, to be our companion through the magnificent rooms of our own
National Gallery; without question now the most important collection of
paintings in Europe for the purposes of the general student. Of course
the Florentine School must always be studied in Florence, the Dutch
in Holland, and the Roman in Rome; but to obtain a clear knowledge of
their relations to each other, and compare with the best advantage the
characters in which they severally excel, the thoughtful scholars of
any foreign country ought now to become pilgrims to the Dome--(such as
it is)--of Trafalgar Square.

We have indeed--be it to our humiliation remembered--small reason
to congratulate ourselves on the enlargement of the collection now
belonging to the public, by the sale of the former possessions of our
nobles. But since the parks and castles which were once the pride,
beauty, and political strength of England are doomed by the progress
of democracy to be cut up into lots on building leases, and have
their libraries and pictures sold at Sotheby's and Christie's, we
may at least be thankful that the funds placed by the Government at
the disposal of the Trustees for the National Gallery have permitted
them to save so much from the wreck of English mansions and Italian
monasteries, and enrich the recreations of our metropolis with graceful
interludes by Perugino and Raphael.

It will be at once felt by the readers of the following catalogue that
it tells them, about every picture and its painter, just the things
they wished to know. They may rest satisfied also that it tells them
these things on the best historical authorities, and that they have in
its concise pages an account of the rise and decline of the arts of the
Old Masters, and record of their personal characters and worldly state
and fortunes, leaving nothing of authentic tradition, and essential
interest, untold.

As a collection of critical remarks by esteemed judges, and of clearly
formed opinions by earnest lovers of art, the little book possesses a
metaphysical interest quite as great as its historical one. Of course
the first persons to be consulted on the merit of a picture are those
for whom the artist painted it: with those in after generations who
have sympathy with them; one does not ask a Roundhead or a Republican
his opinion of the Vandyke at Wilton, nor a Presbyterian minister his
impressions of the Sistine Chapel:--but from any one honestly taking
pleasure in any sort of painting, it is always worth while to hear the
grounds of his admiration, if he can himself analyse them. For those
who take no pleasure in painting, or who are offended by its inevitable
faults, any form of criticism is insolent. Opinion is only valuable
when it

                  gilds with various rays
    These painted clouds that beautify our days.

When I last lingered in the Gallery before my old favourites, I
thought them more wonderful than ever before; but as I draw towards
the close of life, I feel that the real world is more wonderful yet:
that Painting has not yet fulfilled half her mission,--she has told us
only of the heroism of men and the happiness of angels: she may perhaps
record in future the beauty of a world whose mortal inhabitants are
happy, and which angels may be glad to visit.

  J. RUSKIN.

  _April_ 1888.

[Illustration]




GENERAL INTRODUCTION

WITH SOME

ACCOUNT OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY


=Division into Volumes.=--In arrangement and, to some degree, in
contents the Handbook in its present form differs from the earlier
editions. Important changes have been made during the last few years
in the constitution and scope of the National Gallery itself. The
Gallery now consists of two branches controlled by a single Board of
Trustees: (1) the "National Gallery" in Trafalgar Square; and (2) the
"Tate Gallery" or, as it is officially called, the "National Gallery
of British Art" on the Thames Embankment at Millbank.[1] At the former
Gallery are hung all the pictures belonging to Foreign Schools.
Pictures of the British Schools are hung partly in Trafalgar Square
and partly at Millbank, and from time to time pictures are moved from
one Gallery to the other. It has therefore been decided to divide the
Handbook into volumes according to subject rather than according to
position. Volume I. deals with the Foreign Schools (National Gallery);
Volume II., with the British Schools (National Gallery and Tate
Gallery). By this division the convenience of the books for purposes
of reference or use in the Galleries will not be disturbed by future
changes in the allocation of British pictures between Trafalgar Square
and Millbank respectively.

=How to use the Handbook.=--The one fixed point in the arrangement of
the National Gallery is the numbering of the pictures. The numbers
affixed to the frames, and referred to in the Official Reports
and Catalogues, are never changed. This is an excellent rule, the
observance of which, in the case of some foreign galleries, would have
saved no little inconvenience to students and visitors. In the present,
as in the preceding editions of the Handbook, advantage has been taken
of this fixed system of numbering; and in the pages devoted to the
Biographical and Descriptive Catalogue the pictures are enumerated in
their numerical order. The introductory remarks on the chief Schools
of Painting represented in the Gallery are brought together at the
beginning of the book. The visitor who desires to make an historical
study of the Collection may, if he will, glance first at the general
introduction given to the pictures in each School; and then, as he
makes his survey of the rooms devoted to the several Schools, note the
numbers on the frames, and refer to the Numerical Catalogue following
the series of introductions. On the other hand, the visitor who
does not care to use the Handbook in this way has only to skip the
preliminary chapters, and to pass at once, as he finds himself before
this picture or that, to the Numerical Catalogue. For the convenience,
again, of visitors or students desiring to find the works of some
particular painter, the full and detailed Index of Painters, first
introduced in the Third Edition, has here been retained. References to
all the pictures by each painter, and to the page where some account
of his life and work is given, will be found in this Index. Finally,
a concise Numerical Index is given, wherein the reader may find at
once the particulars of acquisition, the _provenance_, and other
circumstances regarding every picture (by a foreign artist) in the
possession of the National Gallery, wherever deposited.

=History of the National Gallery.=--"For the purposes of the general
student, the National Gallery is now," said Mr. Ruskin in 1888,
"without question the most important collection of paintings in
Europe." Forty years before he said of the same Gallery that it was
"an European jest." The growth of the Gallery from jest to glory[2]
may be traced in the final index to this book, where the pictures
are enumerated in the order of their acquisition. Many incidents
connected with the acquisition of particular pictures will also be
found chronicled in the Catalogue[3]; but it may here be interesting
to summarise the history of the institution. The National Gallery of
England dates from the year 1824, when the Angerstein Collection of
thirty-eight pictures was purchased. They were exhibited for some
years in Mr. Angerstein's house in Pall Mall; for it was not till
1832 that the building in which the collection is now deposited was
begun. This building, which was designed expressly for the purpose by
William Wilkins, R.A., was opened to the public in 1838.[4] At that
time, however, the Gallery comprised only six rooms, the remaining
space in the building being devoted to the Royal Academy of Arts--whose
inscription may still be seen above a disused doorway to the right of
the main entrance. In 1860 the first enlargement was made--consisting
of one new room. In 1869 the Royal Academy removed to Burlington House,
and five more rooms were gained for the National Gallery. In 1876 the
so-called "New Wing" was added, erected from a design by E. M. Barry,
R.A. In that year the whole collection was for the first time housed
under a single roof. The English School had, since its increase in
1847 by the Vernon gift, been exhibited first at Marlborough House
(up to 1859), and afterwards at South Kensington. In 1884 a further
addition of five rooms was commenced under the superintendence of Sir
John Taylor, of Her Majesty's Office of Works; these rooms (numbered
I., II., III., V., VI. on the plan), with a new staircase and other
improvements, were opened to the public in 1887; and the Gallery then
consisted of twenty-two rooms, besides ample accommodation for the
offices of the Director and the convenience of the students.[5] A
further extension of the Gallery, on the site of St. George's Barracks,
was completed in 1911; this consisted of six new rooms.[6] At the same
time the older portions of the building were reconstructed, in order to
make it fire-proof. The rearrangement of the Gallery is described below
(p. xxv).

=Growth of the Collection.=--This growth in the Galleries has, however,
barely sufficed to keep pace with the growth of the pictures. In 1838
the total number of national pictures was still only 150. In 1875 the
number was 926. In 1911 the number of pictures, etc. (exclusive of
the Turner water-colours) vested in the Trustees of the Gallery was
nearly 2870. This result has been due to the combination of private
generosity and State aid which is characteristic of our country. The
Vernon gift of English pictures in 1847 added over 150 at a stroke.
Ten years later Turner's bequest added (besides some 19,000 drawings
in various stages of completion) 100 pictures. In 1876 the Wynn Ellis
gift of foreign pictures added nearly another hundred. In 1910 the
bequest of Mr. George Salting added 192 pictures (160 foreign and 32
British). Particulars of other gifts and bequests may be gathered from
the Appendix. Parliamentary grants have of late years been supplemented
by private subscriptions and bequests. In 1890 Messrs. N. M. Rothschild
and Sons, Sir Edward Guinness, Bart. (now Lord Iveagh), and Mr. Charles
Cotes, each contributed £10,000 towards the purchase of three important
pictures (1314-5-6); whilst in 1904, Mr. Astor, Mr. Beit, Lord Burton,
Lord Iveagh, Mr. Pierpont Morgan, and Lady Wantage subscribed £21,000
to supplement a Government grant for the purchase of Titian's "Portrait
of Ariosto" (1944). In 1903 a "National Art-Collections Fund" was
established for organising private benefactions to the Galleries
and Museums of the United Kingdom; it was through this agency that
the famous "Venus" by Velazquez (2057), in 1906, and the still more
famous "Christina, Duchess of Milan," by Holbein (2475), in 1909, were
added to the National Gallery. The same Fund contributed also to the
purchase in 1911, of the Castle Howard Mabuse (2790). Mr. Francis
Clarke bequeathed £23,104, and Mr. T. D. Lewis £10,000, the interest
upon which sums was to be expended in pictures. Mr. R. C. Wheeler
left a sum of £2655, the interest on which was to purchase _English_
pictures. Mr. J. L. Walker left £10,000, not to form a fund, but to
be spent on "a picture or pictures." In 1903 a large bequest was made
to the Gallery by Colonel Temple West. The will was disputed; but
by the settlement ultimately effected (1907, 1908) a sum of £99,909
was received, of which the interest is available for the purchase of
pictures. In 1906 Mr. C. E. G. Mackerell made a bequest, and this
will also was disputed. By the settlement (1908) a sum of £2859 was
received, and a further sum will be forthcoming at the expiration
of certain life-interests, of which sums, again, the interest will
be available for the purchase of pictures. Appendix II. shows the
pictures acquired from these several funds. This growth of the Gallery
by private gift and public expenditure concurrently accords with the
manner of its birth. One of the factors which decided Lord Liverpool in
favour of the purchase of Mr. Angerstein's Collection was the generous
offer of a private citizen--Sir George Beaumont.

=Value of the Pictures.=--Sir George's gift, as we shall see from a
little story attaching to one of his pictures (61), was not of that
which cost him nothing in the giving. The generosity of private donors,
which that little story places in so pleasing and even pathetic a
light, has been accompanied by public expenditure at once liberal
and prudent. The total cost of the collection so far has been about
£900,000[7]; at present prices there is little doubt that the pictures
so acquired could be sold for several times that sum. It will be seen
in the following pages that there have been some bad bargains; but
these mostly belong to the period when responsibility was divided, in
an undefined way, between the Trustees and the Keeper. The present
organisation of the Gallery dates from 1855, when, as the result
of several Commissions and Committees, a Treasury Minute was drawn
up--appointing a Director to preside over the Gallery, and placing an
annual grant of money at his disposal.[8] The curious reader may trace
the use of this discretion made by successive Directors in the table of
prices given in the final index--a table which would afford material
for an instructive history of recent fashions in art. The annual grant
has from time to time been supplemented by special grants, of which
the most notable were those for the Peel Collection, the Blenheim
pictures, the Longford Castle pictures, two new Rembrandts (1674-5),
Titian's "Ariosto" (1944), Holbein's "Duchess of Milan" (2475),
and Mabuse's "Adoration of the Magi" (2790) respectively. The Peel
Collection consisted of seventy-seven pictures. The vote was proposed
in the House of Commons on March 20, 1871, and in supporting it the
late Sir W. H. Gregory (one of the Trustees of the Gallery) alluded to
"the additional interest connected with the collection, for it was the
labour of love of one of our greatest English Statesmen, and it was
gratifying to see that the taste of the amateur was on a par with the
sagacity of the minister, for throughout this large collection there
could hardly be named more than two or three pictures which were not of
the very highest order of merit." The price paid for this collection,
£70,000, was exceedingly moderate.[9] The "princely" price given for
the two Blenheim pictures is more open to exception; but if the price
was unprecedented, so also was the sale of so superb a Raphael in the
present day unprecedented.

=Features of the Collection.=--The result of the expenditure with
which successive Parliaments have thus supplemented private gifts
has been to raise the National Gallery to a position second to that
of no single collection in the world. The number of pictures now on
view in Trafalgar Square, exclusive of the water-colours, is about
1600.[10] This number is very much smaller than that of the galleries
at Dresden, Madrid, and Paris--the three largest in the world. On
the other hand no foreign gallery has been so carefully acquired, or
so wisely weeded, as ours. An Act was passed in 1856 authorising the
sale of unsuitable works, whilst another passed in 1883 sanctioned the
thinning of the Gallery in favour of Provincial collections. There
are still many serious gaps. In the Italian School we have no work by
Masaccio--the first of the naturalisers in landscape; only one doubtful
example of Palma Vecchio, the greatest of the Bergamese painters;
no first-rate portrait by Tintoret. The French School is little
represented--an omission which is, however, splendidly supplied in the
Wallace Collection at Hertford House, now the property of the nation.
In the National Gallery itself there is no picture by "the incomparable
Watteau," the "prince of Court painters." The specimens of the Spanish
School are few in number, though Velazquez is now finely represented;
whilst amongst the old masters of our own British School there are
many gaps for some future Vernon or Tate to fill up. But on the other
hand we can set against these deficiencies many painters who, and even
schools which, can nowhere--in one place--be so well studied as in
Trafalgar Square. The works of Crivelli--one of the quaintest and most
charming of the earlier Venetians--which hang together in one room; the
works of the Brescian School, including those of its splendid portrait
painters--Moroni and Il Moretto; the series of Raphaels, showing each
of his successive styles; and in the English School the unrivalled and
incomparable collection of Turners,--are amongst the particular glories
of the National Collection. Historically the collection is remarkably
instructive. This is a point which successive Directors have, on the
recommendation of Royal Commissions, kept steadily in view; and which
has been very clearly shown since the successive re-arrangements of the
Gallery after the extension in 1887.

=Scope of the Handbook.=--It is in order to help visitors to take full
advantage of the opportunities thus afforded for historical study that
I have furnished some general introductions to the various Schools
of Painting represented in the National Gallery. With regard to the
notes in the Numerical Catalogue, my object has been to interest the
daily increasing numbers of the general public who visit the National
Gallery. The full inventories and other details, which are necessary
for the identification of pictures, and which are most admirably given
in the (unabridged) Official Catalogue--would obviously be out of place
in a book designed for popular use. Nor, secondly, would any elaborate
technical criticism have been in keeping--even had it been in my power
to offer it--with a guide intended for unprofessional readers. C. R.
Leslie, the father of the present Academician, tells how he "spoke one
day to Stothard of his touching picture of a sailor taking leave of his
wife or sweetheart. 'I am glad you like it, sir,' said Stothard; 'it
was painted with japanner's gold size.'" I have been mainly concerned
with the sentiment of the pictures, and have for the most part left the
"japanner's gold size" alone.

=Mr. Ruskin's Notes.=--It had often occurred to me, as a student of
Mr. Ruskin's writings, that a collection of his scattered notes upon
painters and pictures now in the National Gallery would be of great
value. I applied to Mr. Ruskin in the matter, and he readily permitted
me to make what use I liked of any, or all, of his writings. The
generosity of this permission, which was supplemented by constant
encouragement and counsel, makes me the more anxious to explain clearly
the limits of his responsibility for the book. He did not attempt to
revise, or correct, either my gleanings from his own books, or the
notes added by myself from other sources. Beyond his general permission
to me to reprint his past writings, Mr. Ruskin had, therefore,
no responsibility for this compilation whatever. I should more
particularly state that the pages upon the Turner Gallery in the Second
Volume were not even glanced at by him. The criticisms from his books
there collected represent, therefore, solely his attitude to Turner at
the time they were severally written. But, subject to this deduction,
the passages from Ruskin arranged throughout the following pages
will, I hope, enable the _Handbook_ to serve a second purpose. Any
student who goes through the Gallery under Ruskin's guidance--even at
second-hand--can hardly fail to obtain some insight into the system of
art-teaching embodied in his works. The full exposition of that system
must still be studied in the original text-books, but here the reader
may find a series of examples and illustrations which will perhaps make
the study more vivid and actual.

=Attribution of Pictures.=--In the matter of _attributions_, the rule,
in the successive editions of this Handbook, has been to follow the
authority of the Official Labels and Catalogues. Criticism has been
very busy of late years with the traditional attribution of pictures
in our Gallery, and successive Directors introduce their several, and
sometimes contradictory, opinions on such points. Thus more than One
Old Master hitherto supposed to be represented in the Gallery has
been banished, and others, whose fame had not previously been bruited
abroad, have been credited with familiar masterpieces. Thus--to
notice some of the changes made by Sir Edward Poynter (Catalogue of
1906)--among the Venetians, Bastiani and Catena have come into favour.
To Bastiani was given the picture of "The Doge Giovanni Mocenigo" (750)
which for forty years has been exhibited as a work by Carpaccio; that
charming painter now disappears from the National Gallery. To Catena
is attributed the "St. Jerome" (694), which for several decades had
been cited as peculiarly characteristic of Bellini. To Catena also is
given the "Warrior in Adoration" (234). In this case Catena's gain is
Giorgione's loss. But elsewhere Giorgione has received compensation for
disturbance. To him has been given the "Adoration of the Magi" (1160),
which some critics attributed to Catena. The beautiful "Ecce Homo"
(1310), which was sold as a Carlo Dolci and bought by Sir Frederick
Burton as a Bellini, was ascribed by Sir Edward Poynter to Cima. One
of the minor Venetians--Basaiti, who enjoyed a high reputation at the
National Gallery--was deprived of the pretty "Madonna of the Meadow"
(599), which went to swell the opulent record of Bellini. Among the
Florentines, a newcomer is Zenobio Macchiavelli, to whom is attributed
an altar-piece (586) formerly catalogued under the name of Fra Filippo
Lippi. Cosimo Rosselli, hitherto credited with a large "St. Jerome in
the Desert" (227), now disappears; it was labelled "Tuscan School,"
and was any one's picture. The attribution of pictures belonging to
the group of the two Lippis and Botticelli is still very uncertain.
A note on these critical diversities will be found under No. 293.
Among alterations in other schools we may note the substitution of
Zurbaran for Velazquez as the painter of "The Nativity," No. 232; the
attribution to Patinir, the Fleming, of a landscape formerly labelled
"Venetian School" (1298); and the discovery of Jacob van Oost as the
painter of a charming "Portrait of a Boy" (1137), which, but for an
impossibility in the dates, might well continue to pass as Isaac van
Ostade's.

Such were the principal changes made in the ascriptions of the pictures
during Sir Edward Poynter's directorate. His successor, Sir Charles
Holroyd, has recently made many others, as shown in the following list:

      97 (_P. Veronese_), now described as "after Veronese."

      215, 216 (_School of T. Gaddi_), now assigned to _Lorenzo
      Monaco_ (_see_ 1897).

      227 (_Florentine School_), now assigned to _Francesco
      Botticini_ (a Tuscan painter of the 15th century).

      276 (_School of Giotto_), now assigned to _Spinello Aretino_;
      for whom, _see_ 581.

      296 (_Florentine School_), now assigned to _Verrocchio_; _see_
      below, p. 262.

      568 (_School of Giotto_), now assigned to _Angelo di Taddeo
      Gaddi_, a pupil of Giotto's chief disciple, Taddeo Gaddi (for
      whom, _see_ p. 211).

      579 (_School of Taddeo Gaddi_), now assigned to _Niccolo di
      Pietro Gerini_, a painter of Florence who was inscribed in the
      guild in 1368 and died in 1415. Our picture is dated 1387.

      579A (_School of Taddeo Gaddi_), now assigned to Gaddi's pupil,
      _Giovanni da Milano_.

      581 (_Spinello Aretino_), now assigned to _Orcagna_; for whom,
      _see_ 569.

      585 (_Umbrian School_), now assigned to "School of
      _Pollajuolo_"; for whom, _see_ 292.

      591 (_Benozzo Gozzoli_), now described as "School of Benozzo."

      592 (_Filippino Lippi_), now assigned to _Botticelli_; _see
      below_, p. 294 _n._

      599 (_Giovanni Bellini_), now re-assigned to _Basaiti_; _see
      below_, p. 299.

      636 (_Titian_ or _Palma_). After a period of ascription to
      Titian, this portrait is now re-assigned to _Palma_; _see
      below_, p. 315.

      650 (_Angelo Bronzino_), now assigned to his pupil, _Alessandro
      Allori_ (Florentine: 1535-1607).

      654 (_School of Roger van der Weyden_), now assigned to _School
      of Robert Campin_; for whom, _see_ 2608.

      655 (_Bernard van Orley_), now ascribed to _Ambrosius Benson_;
      born in Lombardy, painted in Bruges, living in 1545.

      658 (_after Schongauer_), now assigned to _School of Campin_.
      The picture ascribed to the "Master of Flémalle," as referred
      to in the text (p. 328), is now No. 2608 (also now assigned to
      Campin).

      659 (_Johann Rottenhammer_), now assigned to _Jan Brueghel, the
      younger_ (1601-1667), a scholar of Brueghel, the elder.

      664 (_Roger van der Weyden_), now assigned to _Dierick Bouts_;
      for whom, _see_ 2595.

      670 (_Angelo Bronzino_), now described as "School of Bronzino."

      696 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _Petrus Cristus_; for
      whom, _see_ 2593.

      704 (_Bronzino_), now described as "School of Bronzino."

      709 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _Memlinc_; for whom,
      _see_ 686.

      713 (_Jan Mostaert_), now assigned to _Jan Prevost_ (Flemish:
      1462-1529), a painter of Bruges and a friend of Albert Dürer.

      714 (_Cornelis Engelbertsz_), now assigned to _Bernard van
      Orley_; for whom, _see_ 655.

      715 (_Joachim Patinir_), now assigned to _Quentin Metsys_; for
      whom, _see_ 295.

      750 (_Lazzaro Bastiani_), now described as "School of Gentile
      Bellini"; for whom, _see_ 1213.

      774 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _Dierick Bouts_; for
      whom, _see_ 2595.

      779, 780 (_Borgognone_), now described as "School of
      Borgognone."

      781 (_Florentine School_), now attributed to _Botticini_.

      782 (_Botticelli_), now described as "School of Botticelli."

      808 (_Giovanni Bellini_), now assigned to _Gentile Bellini_;
      _see below_, p. 422 _n._

      916 (_School of Botticelli_), now assigned to _Jacopo del
      Sellaio_; for whom, _see_ 2492.

      943 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _D. Bouts_.

      1017 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _Josse de Momper_;
      _see below_, p. 489.

      1033 (_Filippino Lippi_), now assigned to _Botticelli_; _see
      below_, p. 494.

      1048 (_Italian_), now assigned to _Scipione Pulzone_; _see
      below_, p. 505.

      1078, 1079 (_Flemish School_), now "attributed to _Gerard
      David_"; for whom, _see_ 1045.

      1080 (_School of the Rhine_), now assigned to _Flemish School_.

      1083 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _Albrecht Bouts_ (a
      son of D. Bouts), who died in 1549.

      1085 (_School of the Rhine_), now assigned to _Geertgen Tot
      Sint Jans_ (Dutch: 15th century). This painter was a pupil of
      Albert van Ouwater; he established himself at Haarlem in a
      convent belonging to the Knights of St. John (whence his name,
      Gerard of St. John's). His works were seen and admired by Dürer.

      1086 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to the "School of Robert
      Campin"; for whom, _see_ 2608.

      1109A (_Mengs_). To this picture the number 1099 (noted in
      previous editions of this _Handbook_ as having been missed in
      the official numbering) is now given.

      1121 (_Venetian School_), now assigned to _Catena_; for whom,
      _see_ 234.

      1124 (_Filippino Lippi_), now described as "School of
      Botticelli."

      1126 (_Botticelli_), now assigned to _Botticini_; _see_ on this
      subject p. 536 _n._

      1160 (_School of Giorgione_), now assigned to _Giorgione_
      himself.

      1199 (_Florentine School_), now assigned to _Pier Francesco
      Fiorentino_; a Tuscan painter of the 15th century.

      1376 (_Velazquez_), now "ascribed to Velazquez."

      1412 (_Filippino Lippi_), now described as "School of
      Botticelli."

      1419 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _Early French School_.
      The picture formed part of a diptych; the companion picture was
      in the Dudley Collection (No. 29 in the sale catalogue of 1892,
      where an illustration of it was given). In this the choir of
      St. Denis is shown. There are two portraits by the same hand at
      Chantilly.

      1433 (_Flemish School_), now assigned to _Roger van der
      Weyden_; for whom, _see_ 664.

      1434 (_Velazquez_), now "ascribed to Velazquez," and it is
      added that the picture has been attributed to Luca Giordano
      (Neapolitan: 1632-1705).

      1440 (_Giovanni Bellini_), now assigned to _Gentile Bellini_;
      for whom, _see_ 1213.

      1468 (_Spinello Aretino_), now assigned to _Jacopo di Cione_,
      the younger brother of Andrea Cione (called Orcagna); he was
      still living in 1394.

      1652 This picture has hitherto been assigned to the _British
      School_ (and therefore included in vol. ii. of the _Handbook_),
      and called a portrait of Katharine Parr. It is now discovered
      to belong to the _Dutch School_ and to be a "portrait of Madame
      van der Goes."

      1699 (_Jan Vermeer_), now "attributed to Vermeer."

      1842 (_Tuscan School_), now "attributed to _Stefano di
      Giovanni_," known as _Sassetta_ (Sienese: 1392-1450).

      1870 "Angels with Keys," by _Sebastiano Conca_ (Neapolitan:
      1679-1764). Lent by the Victoria and Albert Museum.

      1903 (_Jan Fyt_), now assigned to _Pieter Boel_ (Flemish:
      1622-1674), of Antwerp, who became official painter to Louis
      XIV.

It will be observed that critical fashions are unstable, and that in
several cases Sir Edward Poynter's changes have been reversed. The
recent alterations were made just as this edition of the _Handbook_ was
going to press. The ascriptions in the body of my Catalogue remain,
therefore, in conformity with the Official Catalogue of 1906 which
embodied Sir Edward Poynter's views. The lists of painters and pictures
at the end (Appendix I. and II.) have, on the other hand, been revised
in accordance with Sir Charles Holroyd's alterations.

=Additional Notes.=--In the _notes upon the pictures_, a large number
of additional remarks have been introduced since this _Handbook_
first appeared. These, it is hoped, may serve here and there to
deepen the visitor's impression, to suggest fresh points of view, to
open up incidental sources of interest. Attention may be called, by
way of example, under this head, to several notes upon the designs
depicted on the dresses, draperies, and backgrounds of the Italian
pictures. These designs, sometimes invented by the artists themselves
and sometimes copied from actual stuffs, form a series of examples
which illustrate the "art fabrics" of the best period of Italian
decorative art, and which might well give hints for the decoration of
textile fabrics to-day.[11] Another incidental source of interest in
a collection of pictures such as ours, is the historical development
of art as it may be traced in the several representations of the same
subject by different painters, in successive periods, and in different
schools. Such comparisons are instructive to those interested alike
in the evolution of art and in the history of religious ideas. In the
art of mediæval Christendom we find an unwritten theology, a popular
figurative teaching of the sublime story of Christianity blended with
the traditions of many generations. On the walls of the National
Gallery we may see a series of typical scenes from the Annunciation to
the Passion, from the childhood of Christ to His Death, Resurrection,
and Ascension, together with ideal forms of apostles and saints. These
pictures, contemplated in sequence and compared with one another,
afford, as a writer in the _Dublin Review_ (October 1888) has pointed
out, a large and interesting field for thought. Very interesting it
is also to trace the different types which prevail in the different
schools. Thus at Florence, the Madonna is a tender, shrinking, delicate
maiden. At Venice, she is a calm, serene, and pure-spirited mother.
The Florentine "handmaiden of the Lord" often wears a mystic, and
almost always an intellectual air. The Venetian type, seen at its
central perfection in Bellini, has a neck firm as a column; the child
is nude and plays with a flower or fruit; grandeur of mien and a noble
type of motherhood are the ideals the Venetian painters set before
themselves. The Lombard Madonna is less spiritual and severe than the
Florentine. A refined worldly beauty replaces here the poetic idealism
of the Tuscan artists. With the Umbrian painters the model of the
Madonna is usually a softly-rounded and very girlish maiden. A certain
mystic pensiveness informs her features. Her feet tread this earth,
but her soul is absorbed in the contemplation of the infinite.[12] A
study of the successive characteristics of Raphael's Madonnas, passing
from the vaguely divine to the frankly human, would form material
for a volume in itself.[13] In another department of the painter's
art, the comparative method of study is no less suggestive. It is one
of the most curious points of interest in any large collection of
pictures to notice the different impressions that the same elements
of natural scenery make upon different painters. As figure painting
came to be perfected, some adequate suggestion of landscape background
was required. Giotto and Orcagna first attempted to give resemblance
to nature in this respect. Subsequent painters carried the attempt
to greater success, but it was long before landscape for its own
sake obtained attention. When it did, the preferences of individual
painters, now freed from conventionalism, found abundant scope, as we
may see by pausing in succession before the flowery meadows of the
"primitives," the "fiery woodlands of Titian," the savage crags of
Salvator Rosa, the "saffron skies of Claude."[14] These are some of the
incidental points of interest upon which additional notes have been
supplied in recent editions. Many others will be discovered by the
patient reader of the following pages.

=Notices of Painters.=--Lastly, the _biographical and critical notices_
of the painters have been revised and expanded since the first
appearance of the book. Many have been re-written throughout, nearly
all have been re-cast, and a good many references to pictures in other
galleries and countries have been introduced. The important accession
to the National Gallery of the Arundel Society's unique collection
of copies from the old masters affords an opportunity even to the
untraveled visitor to become acquainted, in some sort, with the most
famous wall-paintings of Italy. Mr. Ruskin, by whose death the National
Gallery lost one of its best and oldest friends, once expressed a hope
to me that the notices of the painters given in this Handbook would
be found useful by some readers not only as a companion in Trafalgar
Square, but also for other galleries, at home and abroad. Nobody can
know better than the compiler how far Mr. Ruskin's kindness led him in
the direction of over-indulgence.

I can only hope that the later editions have been made--largely owing
to the suggestions of critics and private correspondents--a little
more deserving of the kind reception which, now for a period of nearly
twenty-five years, has been given by the public to my Handbook.

  E. T. C.

  _May 1912._

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Tate Gallery is ten minutes' drive or twenty minutes' walk
from Trafalgar Square. It is reached in a straight line by Whitehall,
Parliament Street, past the Houses of Parliament, Millbank Street, and
Grosvenor Road.

[2] Mr. Ruskin himself was converted by the acquisition of the great
Perugino (No. 288). In congratulating the Trustees on their acquisition
of this "noble picture," he wrote: "It at once, to my mind, raises our
National Gallery from a second-rate to a first-rate collection. I have
always loved the master, and given much time to the study of his works;
but this is the best I have ever seen" (_Notes on the Turner Gallery_,
p. 89 _n._).

[3] See, for instance, Nos. 10, 61, 193, 195, 479 and 498, 757, 790,
896, 1131, and 1171.

[4] The exterior of the building is not generally considered an
architectural success, and the ugliness of the dome is almost
proverbial. But it should be remembered that the original design
included the erection of suitable pieces of sculpture--such as may
be seen in old engravings of the Gallery, made from the architect's
drawings--on the still vacant pedestals.

[5] The several extensions of the Gallery are shown in the plan on a
later page.

[6] The total number should thus be 28; but in the reconstruction four
smaller rooms were thrown into two larger ones. The plan thus shows 25
numbered rooms and one called the "Dome."

[7] This sum only includes amounts paid out of Parliamentary grants or
other National Gallery funds or special contributions.

[8] In 1894, however, an alteration was made in the Minute, and the
responsibility for purchases was vested in the Director and the
Trustees jointly.

[9] Sir William Gregory relates in his _Autobiography_ the following
story: "In 1884, when the Trustees were endeavouring to secure some of
the pre-eminently fine Rubenses from the Duke of Marlborough, Alfred
Rothschild met me in St. James's Street, and said, 'If you think the
Blenheim Rubenses are more important than your Dutch pictures to the
Gallery, and that you cannot get the money from the Government, I am
prepared to give you £250,000 for the Peel pictures; and I will hold
good to this offer till the day after to-morrow.'"

[10] Of the 1170 pieces thus unaccounted for (the total number
belonging to the Trustees being roughly 2870) the greater number are at
Millbank. Others are on loan to provincial institutions (see App. II.).

[11] With this object in view, several of them have been published with
descriptive letterpress by Mr. Sydney Vacher.

[12] These contrasts were worked out and illustrated by Mr. Grant Allen
in his papers on "The Evolution of Italian Art" in the _Pall Mall
Magazine_ for 1895.

[13] See _Raphael's Madonnas_, by Karl Károly, 1894.

[14] Ruskin's _Modern Painters_ is of course the great book on this
subject. The evolution of "Landscape in Art" has been historically
treated by Mr. Josiah Gilbert in a work thus entitled, which contains
numerous illustrations from the National Gallery.




GUIDE TO THE GALLERY

AND

INTRODUCTIONS TO THE SCHOOLS OF PAINTING


The pictures in the National Gallery are hung methodically, so far
as the wall-space and other circumstances will admit, in order to
illustrate the different schools of painting, and to facilitate their
historical study. Introductions to the several Foreign Schools of
Painting, thus arranged, will be found in the following pages together
with references to many of the chief painters in each school who are
represented in the Gallery. Introductory remarks on the British School
and British Painters will be found in Volume II.

At the present time (May 1912) the arrangement of the Gallery is in
a transitional state, as some of the Rooms are still in process of
reconstruction or rearrangement. When this work is finished, the
arrangement of the whole Gallery will, it is expected, be as shown
below:--

  ARCHAIC GREEK PORTRAITS: North Vestibule.

  ITALIAN SCHOOLS:--
      _Early Tuscan_: North Vestibule.
      _Florentine and Sienese_: Rooms I., II., V.
      _Florentine (later)_: Room III.
      _Milanese_: Room IV.
      _Umbrian_: Room VI.
      _Venetian_: Room VII.
      _Venetian (later)_: Room IX.
      _Paduan_: Room VIII.
      _Venice, etc._: the Dome.
      _Brescian and Bergamese_: Room XV.
      _Bolognese_: Room XXV.
      _Late Italian_: Room XXIII.

  SCHOOLS OF THE NETHERLANDS AND GERMANY:--

      _Early Netherlands_: Room XI.
      _Later Flemish_ (Rubens, etc.): Room X.
      _Dutch_ (landscape: Ruysdael, etc.): Room XII.
      _Dutch_ (Rembrandt): Room XIII.
      _Dutch_: Room XIV.
      _German_: Room XXIV.

  SPANISH SCHOOL: Room XVI.

  FRENCH SCHOOL: Rooms XVII., XVIII.

  BRITISH SCHOOLS:--

      _Hogarth, etc._: Room XXII.
      _Reynolds, Gainsborough, etc._: Room XXI.
      _Romney, Morland, etc._: Room XX.
      _Turner_: Room XIX.

The rooms on the ground floor, hitherto occupied by the Turner
Water-Colours (now for the most part removed to the Tate Gallery: _see_
Vol. II.), will be arranged with pictures of minor importance, with the
Arundel Society's collection and other copies, and with photographs and
other aids to study.

It should, however, be understood that the scheme of arrangement set
out above is provisional, and may be modified. It is also possible that
the numbering of the rooms may be altered. Should this be the case, the
visitor would have no difficulty in marking the changes on the Plan.

[Illustration: PLAN OF THE ROOMS.

  _W. Wilkins 1838_
  _E. M. Barry 1876_
  _Sir J. Taylor 1887_

  VESTIBULE--_Florentine School._
  ROOM   I--_Florentine School._
  "    II--_Sienese School._
  "   III--_Florentine School._
  "    IV--_Schools of Lombardy and Parma._
  "     V--_Ferrarese and Bolognese Schools._
  "    VI--_Umbrian School._
  "   VII--_Venetian & Allied Schools._
  "  VIII--_Paduan School._
  OCTAGON.--_Venetian School._
  ROOM    IX--_Paolo Veronese, etc._
  "     X--_Dutch School._
  "    XI--_Early Flemish School._
  "   XII--_Dutch School._
  "  XIII--_Flemish School._
  "   XIV--_Spanish School._
  "    XV--_German School._
  "   XVI--_French School._
  "  XVII--_French School._
  EAST AND WEST VESTIBULES } _English_
  ROOMS XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI} _School._
  ROOM XXII--_Turner Gallery._
  ROOM A--_Drawings._
  ROOM B--_Pictures by Turner, etc._]

[Illustration]




THE EARLY FLORENTINE SCHOOL

      "The early efforts of Cimabue and Giotto are the burning
      messages of prophecy, delivered by the stammering lips of
      infants"

(RUSKIN: _Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. i. sec. i. ch. ii. § 7).

    Give these, I exhort you, their guerdon and glory
      For daring so much, before they well did it.
    The first of the new, in our race's story,
      Beats the last of the old; 'tis no idle quiddit.

  BROWNING: _Old Pictures in Florence_.


On entering the Gallery from Trafalgar Square, and ascending the
main staircase, the visitor reaches the North Vestibule. What, he
may be inclined to ask, is there worth looking at in the quaint and
gaunt pictures around him here? The answer is a very simple one. This
vestibule is the nursery of Italian art. Here is the first stammering
of infant painting. Accustomed as we are at the present day to so much
technical skill even in the commonest works of art, we may be inclined
to think that the art of painting--the art of giving the resemblances
of things by means of colour laid on to wood or canvas--is an easy
one, of which men have everywhere and at all times possessed the
mastery. But this of course is not the case. The skill of to-day is
the acquired result of long centuries of gradual improvement; and the
pictures in this vestibule bear the same relation to the pictures of
our own time as the stone huts of our forefathers to the Gallery in
which we stand. The poorness of the pictures here is the measure of the
richness of others. To feel the full greatness of Raphael's Madonna
(1171), one should first pause awhile before the earliest Italian
picture here (564), the gaunt and forbidding Madonna by

    Margaritone of Arezzo,
      With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret
    (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so,
      You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?) (_R. Browning_).

But even in the earliest efforts of infancy, there is a certain
amount of inherited gift. First of all, therefore, one should look at
a specimen of such art as Italians had before them when they first
began to paint for themselves. With the fall of the Roman Empire
and the invasion of the Goths, the centre of civilisation shifted
to the capital of the Eastern Church, Byzantium (Constantinople).
The characteristics of Byzantine art may be seen in a Greek picture
(594). The history of early Italian art is the history of the effort
to escape from the swaddling clothes of this rigid Byzantine School.
The effort was of two kinds: first the painters had to see nature
truly, instead of contenting themselves with fixed symbols--art had to
become "natural," instead of "conventional." Secondly, having learned
to see truly, they had to learn how to give a true resemblance of
what they saw; how to exhibit things in relief, in perspective, and
in illumination. In _relief_: that is, they had to learn to show one
thing as standing out from another; in _perspective_: that is, to
show things as they really look, instead of as we infer they are; in
_illumination_: that is, to show things in the colours they assume
under such and such lights. The first distinct advance was made by
Cimabue and Giotto at Florence, but contemporaneous with them was the
similar work of Duccio and his successors at Siena, whose pictures
should be studied in this connection. Various stages in the advance
will be pointed out under the pictures themselves; and the student
of art will perhaps find the same kind of pleasure in tracing the
painter's progress as grown-up people feel in watching the gradual
development of children.

But there is another kind of interest also. Wordsworth says that
children are the best philosophers; and in the case of art at any
rate there is some truth in what he says, for "this is a general
law, that supposing the intellect of the workman the same, the more
imitatively complete his art, the less he will mean by it; and the
ruder the symbol, the deeper is its intention" (Ruskin's _Lectures on
Art_, § 19). The more complete his powers of imitation become, the
more intellectual interest he takes in the expression, and the less
therefore in the thing meant. What then is the meaning of these early
pictures? To answer this question, we must go back to consider what
it was that gave the original impulse to the revival of art in Italy.
To this revival two circumstances contributed. First, no school of
painting can exist until society is comparatively rich, until there
is wealth enough to support a class of men with leisure to produce
beautiful things. Such an increase of wealth took place at Florence in
the thirteenth century: the gay and courteous life of the Florentines
at that time was ready for the adornment of art. The particular
direction which art took was due to the religious revival, headed by
St. Francis and St. Dominic, which occurred at the same time. Churches
were everywhere built, and on the church walls frescoes were wanted,
alike to satisfy the growing sense of beauty and to assist in teaching
Christian doctrine. These early pictures are thus to be considered as
a kind of painted preaching. The story of Cimabue's great picture (see
No. 565) well illustrates the double origin of the revival of art. It
was to its place above the altar in the great Dominican church of Sta.
Maria Novella at Florence that the picture was carried in triumphal
procession; whilst the fact that a whole city should thus have turned
out to rejoice over the completion of a picture, proves "the widespread
sensibility of the Florentines to things of beauty, and shows the
sympathy which, emanating from the people, was destined to inspire and
brace the artist for his work" (Symonds: _Renaissance_, iii. 137).[15]
The history of Giotto is no less significant. It was for the walls of
the church of St. Francis at Assisi that his greatest work was done. It
was there that he at once pondered over the meaning of the Christian
faith (with what result is shown by Ruskin in _Fors Clavigera_ and
elsewhere), and learned the secret of giving the resemblance of the
objects of that faith in painting. Thus, then, we arrive at the second
source of interest in these old pictures of Florence--rude and foolish
as they sometimes seem. "Those were noble days for the painter, when
the whole belief of Christendom, grasped by his own faith, and firmly
rooted in the faith of the people round him, as yet unimpaired by alien
emanations from the world of classic culture, had to be set forth for
the first time in art. His work was then a Bible, a compendium of grave
divinity and human history, a book embracing all things needful for
the spiritual and civil life of man. He spoke to men who could not
read, for whom there were no printed pages, but whose hearts received
his teaching through the eye. Thus painting was not then what it is
now, a decoration of existence, but a potent and efficient agent in
the education of the race" (_ibid._ p. 143). The message which these
painters had to deliver was painted on the walls of churches or civic
buildings; and it is only there--at Assisi, and Padua, and Florence,
and Siena--that they can be properly read. But from such scraps and
fragments as are here preserved, one may learn, as it were, the
alphabet, and catch the necessary point of view.

But why, it may be asked, did painting come to its new birth first at
Florence, rather than elsewhere in Italy? The first answer is that
painting thus arose at Florence because it was there that a new style
of building at this time arose. The painters were wanted, as we have
seen, to decorate the churches, and in those days there was no sharp
distinction between the arts. Not only were architects sculptors, but
they were often painters and goldsmiths as well. Giotto and Orcagna
are instances of this union of the arts. But why did the new style of
building arise specially in Florence? The answer to this is twofold:
first, the Florentines inherited the artistic gifts and faculties of
the Etruscan (Tuscan) race. Even in late Florentine pictures, pure
Etruscan design will often be found surviving (see 586). Secondly, in
the middle of the thirteenth century new art impulse came from the
North in the shape of a northern builder, who, after building Assisi,
visited Florence and instructed Arnolfo in Gothic, as opposed to Greek
architecture. Thus there met the two principles of art--the Norman (or
Lombard), vigorous and savage; the Greek (or Byzantine), contemplative
but sterile. The new spirit in Florence "adopts what is best in each,
and gives to what it adopts a new energy of its own, ... collects and
animates the Norman and Byzantine tradition, and forms out of the
perfected worship and work of both, the honest Christian faith and
vital craftsmanship of the world.... Central stood Etruscan Florence:
agricultural in occupation, religious in thought, she directed the
industry of the Northman into the arts of peace; kindled the dreams
of the Byzantine with the fire of charity. Child of her peace, and
exponent of her passion, her Cimabue became the interpreter to mankind
of the meaning of the Birth of Christ" (_Ariadne Florentina_, ch. ii.;
_Mornings in Florence_, ii. 44, 45).

      --> _In the left-hand corner of the Vestibule will be found a
      very remarkable series of archaic Greek portraits dating from
      the second or third century A.D. (Nos. 1260-1270)._

       *       *       *       *       *

The architecture of the Entrance Hall and Vestibule is worth some
attention, for here is the finest collection of marbles in London.
Many distant parts of the world have contributed to it. The Alps, from
a steep face of mountain 2000 feet high on the Simplon Pass, send the
two massive square pillars of light green "cipollino" which form the
approach to the Vestibule from the Square. Their carved capitals are of
alabaster from Derbyshire, whilst the bases on which they stand are of
Corrennie granite from near Aberdeen. The square blocks of bluish gray
beneath the upper columns come from New Zealand. Ascending the stone
steps, the visitor should notice the side walls, built up of squares
of "giallo antico," which was brought from the quarry at Simittu, in
the territory of Tunis. It had long been known that Rome was full of
the beautiful "giallo antico," sometimes yellow, sometimes rosy in
colour, but always of exquisite texture and even to work. It had come
from the province of Africa; and the quarry was rediscovered by a
Belgian engineer working on the railway then being made from Tunis to
the Algerian frontier. He observed at Simittu a half-consumed mountain
with gaps clearly marked, from which the last monoliths had been cut,
and the work of the Romans was presently resumed by a Belgian Company.
No more beautiful specimen of the "giallo antico" similar to that used
in Augustan Rome could be desired than slabs in the entrance to the
National Gallery. The cornice above the "giallo antico" walls is of
"pavonazzetto" from the Apennines, near Pisa, and the same marble forms
the base of the red columns. These splendid columns come from quarries
near Chenouah, just west of Algiers, which were first opened by the
French some years ago. Red Etruscan is the unmeaning trade name of this
jasper-like stone, which is also used for door frames in many of the
new rooms with very sumptuous effect.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[15] My references to this book are to the new edition of 1897.




THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL

      "This is the way people look when they feel this or that--when
      they have this or that other mental character: are they
      devotional, thoughtful, affectionate, indignant, or inspired?
      are they prophets, saints, priests, or kings? then--whatsoever
      is truly thoughtful, affectionate, prophetic, priestly,
      kingly--_that_ the Florentine School lived to discern and show;
      _that_ they have discerned and shown; and all their greatness
      is first fastened in their aim at this central truth--the open
      expression of the living human soul" (RUSKIN: _Two Paths_, §
      21).

    Each face obedient to its passion's law,
      Each passion clear proclaimed without a tongue.

  ROBERT BROWNING: _Pictor Ignotus_.


"Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts;--the
book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their
art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two
others; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last."
The reason for this faithfulness in the record of art is twofold. The
art of any nation can only be great "by the general gifts and common
sympathies of the race;" and secondly, "art is always instinctive, and
the honesty or pretence of it therefore open to the day" (_St. Mark's
Rest_, Preface). It has been seen from the remarks already made how
Florentine art in its infancy was thus in a certain sense a record
of the times out of which it sprang. In the later pictures, we may
trace some of the developments which characterised the inner history
of Florence in succeeding stages. The first thing that will strike
any one who takes a general look at the early Florentine pictures and
then at the later, is the fact that easel pictures have now superseded
fragments of fresco and altar-pieces. Here at once we see reflected
two features of the time of the Renaissance. Pictures were no longer
wanted merely for church decoration and Scripture teaching; there
was a growing taste for beautiful things as household possessions.
And then also the influence of the church itself was declining; the
exclusive place hitherto occupied by religion as a motive for art was
being superseded by the revival of classical learning. Benozzo Gozzoli
paints the Rape of Helen, Botticelli paints Mars and Venus, Piero di
Cosimo paints the Death of Procris, and Pollajuolo the story of Apollo
and Daphne. The Renaissance was, however, "a new birth" in another way
than this; it opened men's eyes not only to the learning of the ancient
world, but to the beauties of the world in which they themselves lived.
In previous times the burden of serious and thoughtful minds had been,
"The world is very evil, the times are waxing late;" the burden of the
new song is, "The world is very beautiful." Thus we see the painters
no longer confined to a fixed cycle of subjects represented with the
traditional surroundings, but ranging at will over everything that they
found beautiful or interesting around them. And above all they took
to representing the noblest embodiment of life--the human form. Some
attempts at portraiture may be perceived in the saints of the earliest
pictures; but here we find professed portraits on every wall. This
indeed was one of the chief glories of the Florentine School--"the open
expression of the living human soul." This widening and secularising of
art did not pass in Florence, as we know, without a protest; and here,
too, history is painted on the walls. Some of the protest was silent,
as Angelico's, who painted on through a later generation in the old
spirit; some of it was vocal, in the fiery eloquence of Savonarola,
whose influence may be seen in Botticelli's work (1034).

But the development went on, all protests notwithstanding; for as
the life of every nation runs its appointed course, so does its art;
and the second point of interest in studying a school of painting
is to watch its successive periods of birth, growth, maturity, and
decay. In no school is this development so completely marked as in
the Florentine, which for this reason, as well as for its priority in
time, and therefore influence on succeeding schools, takes precedence
of all others. The _first_ period--covering roughly the fourteenth
century, called the Giottesque, from its principal master--is that in
which the thing told is of more importance than the manner of telling
it, and in which the religious sentiment dominated the plastic faculty.
In the _second_ period, covering roughly the fifteenth century, and
called by the Italians the period of the _quattro-centisti_,[16] the
artist, beginning as we have seen to look freely at the world around
him, begins also to study deeply with a view to represent nature more
exactly. One may see the new passion for the scientific study of the
art in Paolo Uccello (583), who devoted himself to perspective; and
in Pollajuolo (292), who first studied anatomy from the dead body. It
is customary to group the Florentine artists of this scientific and
realistic period under three heads, according to the main tendencies
which they severally exhibit. The first group aimed especially at
"action, movement, and the expression of intense passions." The artist
who stands at the head of this group, Masaccio, is, unhappily, not
represented in the National Gallery, but the descent from him is
represented by Fra Filippo Lippi, Pesellino, Botticelli, Filippino
Lippi. The second group aimed rather at "realistic probability, and
correctness in hitting off the characteristics of individual things,"
and is represented by Cosimo Rosselli, Piero di Cosimo, Ghirlandajo,
Andrea del Sarto, Francia Bigio. Thirdly, some of the Florentine
School were directly influenced by the work of contemporary sculptors.
Chief amongst this group are Pollajuolo, Verocchio, himself a sculptor,
and Lorenzo di Credi. We come now to the _third_ stage in the
Florentine, as in every other vital school of painting. This period
witnesses the perfection of the technical processes of the art, and
the attempt of the painter to "raise forms, imitated by the artists of
the preceding period from nature, to ideal beauty, and to give to the
representations of the sentiments and affections the utmost grace and
energy." The great Florentine masters of this culminating period are
Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo. The former is especially typical
of this stage of development. "When a nation's culture has reached its
culminating point, we see everywhere," says Morelli,[17] "in daily life
as well as in literature and art, that _grace_[18] comes to be valued
more than _character_. So it was in Italy during the closing decades
of the fifteenth century and the opening ones of the sixteenth. To no
artist was it given to express this feeling so fully as to the great
Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps the most richly gifted man that mother
Nature ever made. He was the first who tried to express the smile of
inward happiness, the sweetness of the soul." But this culminating
period of art already contained within it the germs of decay. The very
perfection of the technical processes of painting caused in all, except
painters of the highest mental gifts, a certain deadness and coldness,
such as Browning makes Andrea del Sarto (1487-1531) be conscious of in
his own works; the "faultless painter" as compared with others less
technically perfect but more full of soul (see under 690). Moreover the
very fascination of the great men, the pleasure in imitating their
technical skill, led to decay. Grace soon passed into insipidity, and
the dramatic energy of Michael Angelo into exaggerated violence. One
mannerism led to another until the school of the "Eclectics" sought to
unite the mannerisms of all, and Italian art, having run its course,
became extinct.[19]

The growth and decay of painting described above is connected by Ruskin
with a corresponding growth and decay in religion. He divides the
course of mediæval art into two stages: the first stage (covering the
first two periods above) "is that of the formation of conscience by the
discovery of the true laws of social order and personal virtue, coupled
with sincere effort to live by such laws as they are discovered. All
the Arts advance steadily during this stage of national growth, and
are lovely, even in their deficiencies, as the buds of flowers are
lovely by their vital force, swift change, and continent beauty. The
next stage is that in which the conscience is entirely formed, and
the nation, finding it painful to live in obedience to the precepts
it has discovered, looks about to discover, also, a compromise for
obedience to them. In this condition of mind its first endeavour is
nearly always to make its religion pompous, and please the gods by
giving them gifts and entertainments, in which it may piously and
pleasurably share itself; so that a magnificent display of the powers
of art it has gained by sincerity, takes place for a few years, and
is then followed by their extinction, rapid and complete exactly in
the degree in which the nation resigns itself to hypocrisy. The works
of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Tintoret, belong to this period of
compromise in the career of the greatest nation of the world; and are
the most splendid efforts yet made by human creatures to maintain the
dignity of states with beautiful colours, and defend the doctrines
of theology with anatomical designs." It is easy to see how the
progress in realism led to a decline in religion. "The greater the
(painter's) powers became, the more (his) mind was absorbed in their
attainment, and complacent in their display. The early arts of laying
on bright colours smoothly, of burnishing golden ornaments, or tracing,
leaf by leaf, the outlines of flowers, were not so difficult as that
they should materially occupy the thoughts of the artist, or furnish
foundation for his conceit; he learned these rudiments of his work
without pain, and employed them without pride, his spirit being left
free to express, so far as it was capable of them, the reaches of
higher thought. But when accurate shade, and subtle colour, and perfect
anatomy, and complicated perspective, became necessary to the work, the
artist's whole energy was employed in learning the laws of these, and
his whole pleasure consisted in exhibiting them. His life was devoted,
not to the objects of art, but to the cunning of it; and the sciences
of composition and light and shade were pursued as if there were
abstract good in them;--as if, like astronomy or mathematics, they were
ends in themselves, irrespective of anything to be effected by them.
And without perception, on the part of any one, of the abyss to which
all were hastening, a fatal change of aim took place throughout the
whole world of art. In early times _art was employed for the display of
religious facts_; now, _religious facts were employed for the display
of art_. The transition, though imperceptible, was consummate; it
involved the entire destiny of painting. It was passing from the paths
of life to the paths of death" (_Relation between Michael Angelo and
Tintoret_, pp. 8, 9, and _Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iv.
§ 11. See also under No. 744).

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[16] It should be noted that the Italian terms _quattro-cento_ and
_cinque-cento_ correspond with our _fifteenth_ (1400-1500) and
_sixteenth_ (1500-1600) centuries respectively.

[17] _Italian Masters in German Galleries_, p. 124. My references to
this work are to Mrs. Richter's translation, 1883; in the case of
Morelli's _Borghese and Doria-Pamfili Galleries in Rome_, they are to
Miss Ffoulkes's translation, 1892.

[18] _Well said: but it remains to be asked, whether the "grace" sought
is modest, or wanton: affectionate, or licentious_ (J. R.).

[19] _Not by its own natural course or decay; but by the political and
moral ruin of the cities by whose virtue it had been taught, and in
whose glory it had flourished. The analysis of the decline of religious
faith quoted below does not enough regard the social and material
mischief which accompanied that decline_ (J. R.)




THE SIENESE SCHOOL

      "Since we are teachers to unlearned men, who know not how to
      read, of the marvels done by the power and strength of holy
      religion, ... and since no undertaking, however small, can
      have a beginning or an end without these three things,--that
      is, without the power to do, without knowledge, and without
      true love of the work; and since in God every perfection is
      eminently united; now, to the end that in this our calling,
      however unworthy it may be, we may have a good beginning and
      a good ending in all our works and deeds, we will earnestly
      ask the aid of the Divine grace, and commence by a dedication
      to the honour of the Name, and in the Name of the most Holy
      Trinity" (_Extract from the Statutes of the Painters' Guild of
      Siena_, 1355).


The school of Siena, though in the main closely resembling that of
Florence, has yet an independent origin and a distinct character. There
is a "Madonna" at Siena, painted in 1281, which is decidedly superior
to such work as Margaritone's (564). But the start which Siena obtained
at first was soon lost; and at a time when Florentine art was finding
new directions, that at Siena was running still in the old grooves.
This was owing to the markedly religious character of its painting,
shown in the tone of the statutes above quoted. Such religious fervour
seems at first sight inconsistent with the character of a people who
were famed for factious quarrels and delicate living.[20] But "the
contradiction is more apparent than real. The people of Siena were
highly impressible and emotional, quick to obey the promptings of their
passion, whether it took the form of hatred or of love, of spiritual
fervour or of carnal violence. The religious feeling was a passion
with them, on a par with all the other movements of their quick and
mobile temperament."[21] Sienese art reflects this spirit; it is like
the religion of their St. Catherine, rapt and ecstatic. The early
Florentine pictures are not very dissimilar; but in Siena the same kind
of art lasted much longer. In the work, for instance, of Matteo di
Giovanni (see 1155), there is still the same expression of religious
ecstasy, and the same prodigal use of gold in the background, as marked
the works of the preceding century; yet he was contemporary with the
Florentine Botticelli, who introduced many new motives into art. Matteo
was the best Sienese painter of the fifteenth century, and with him the
independent school of Siena comes to an end. Girolamo del Pacchia (246)
betrays the influence of Florence; whilst Il Sodoma (1144), who settled
at Siena and had many pupils, was not a native, and shows in his style
no affinity with the true Sienese School. Peruzzi (218), on the other
hand, was a native of Siena, but belongs in his artistic development to
the Roman School.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[20] See Dante, _Inferno_ xxix. 121. There was, moreover, in Siena
a "Prodigal Club," and a poet of the day wrote a series of sonnets
(translated by D. G. Rossetti) "Unto the blithe and lordly fellowship."

[21] _History of the Renaissance in Italy_, iii. 161.




THE SCHOOLS OF LOMBARDY

      Painters of "the loveliest district of North Italy, where
      hills, and streams, and air, meet in softest harmonies"
      (RUSKIN: _Queen of the Air_, § 157).

    'Twere pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glow
    Hang full in face of one where'er one roams,
    Since he more than the others brings with him
    Italy's self,--the marvellous Modenese!

  BROWNING: _Bishop Blougram's Apology_.


The loose use of the term "school" has caused much confusion in the
history and criticism of art. Sometimes the term is used with reference
only to the place where such and such painters principally worked.
Thus Raphael and Michael Angelo, together with their followers, are
sometimes called the "Roman School." But Rome produced no great
native painters; she was merely a centre to which painters were drawn
from elsewhere. So too when the phrase "Milanese School" occurs, it
generally means Leonardo da Vinci and his immediate pupils, because,
though a Florentine, he taught at Milan. Sometimes, again, the term
"school" is used as mere geographical expression. Thus under "Lombard
School" are often included the painters of Parma, simply because Parma
is contiguous to Lombardy. A third use of the term school, however, is
that in which it means "a definite quality, native to the district,
shared through many generations by all its painters, and culminating
in a few men of commanding genius." Such a definite quality is
generally marked by "a special collection of traditions, and processes,
a particular method, a peculiar style in design, and an equally
peculiar taste in colouring--all contributing to the representation
of a national ideal existing in the minds of the artists of the same
country at the same time." This is the use of the term which is
suggested by the main arrangement of the National Gallery, and which is
at once the most instructive and the most interesting.

Following this principle in the case of the present chapter, we
must first dispose of the "pseudo-Lombards"--the Cremonese, namely,
and Correggio. The pictures belonging to artists of Cremona are, as
will be seen below, practically Venetian. Correggio and his imitator
Parmigiano are more difficult to deal with. The truth is that Correggio
stands very much apart (see under 10); but if he must be labelled,
it seems best to follow Morelli and class him, on the score of his
early training, with the Ferrarese. Coming now to the genuine Lombard
School, one sees by looking round the room that it is by no means
identical with Leonardo da Vinci. He himself was a Florentine, who
settled at Milan, and whose powerful individuality exercised a strong
influence on succeeding painters there. But before his coming, there
was a native Lombard School--with artists scattered about in the towns
and villages around Milan, and with a distinct style of its own. Long
before Leonardo came to settle at Milan, the Lombard Madonnas--with
their long oval faces and somewhat simpering smile--have already what
we now describe as a "Leonardesque character." Among technical points
we may notice as characteristic of the Lombard School, in its earlier
phases, a partiality for sombre tints and high finish in the rendering
of detail. In spirit the School is characterised by great simplicity of
feeling. It will be noticed that among the Milanese pictures there are
few with any allegorical or mythological subject. Even after Leonardo
came to Milan, bringing with him new motives and a wide curiosity, the
native Lombard masters, such as Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari, adhered
in the main to sacred subjects. The Lombard School, it should be
observed, was late in arising. The building of Milan Cathedral and the
Certosa of Pavia in the first part of the fifteenth century directed
the art-impulse of the time rather to sculpture, and it was not till
about 1450 that Vincenzo Foppa came from Brescia and established the
principal school of painting at Milan. Other schools started with
spiritual aims, which wore off, as it were, under the new pleasure of
sharpening their means of execution; but the Lombards first took up
the art when it had already been reduced to a science. And then most
of the painters were natives, not of some large capital, but of small
towns or country villages. Thus Luini was born on the Lago Maggiore,
and the traditions of his life all murmur about the lake district. But
he learned technique at Milan; and thus came to "stand alone," adds
Ruskin, "in uniting consummate art power with untainted simplicity of
religious imagination" (see references under 18).

With regard to the historical development of the school, it was
founded, as we have seen, by Vincenzo Foppa, "the Mantegna of the
Lombard School." Borgognone, his pupil, was its Perugino. Then came
Leonardo from Florence, and the school divides into two sets--those
who were immediately and directly his imitators, and those who,
whilst feeling his influence, yet preserved the independent Lombard
traditions. The visitor will have no difficulty in recognising the
pictures of Beltraffio, Oggionno, and Martino Piazza as belonging to
the former class. Solario, Luini, and Lanini are more independent.
Lastly Sodoma, a pupil of Leonardo, went off to Siena and established
a second Sienese School there, which is represented at the National
Gallery by Peruzzi (218).

[Illustration]




FERRARESE AND BOLOGNESE SCHOOLS

      "One may almost apply to the School of Ferrara the proud boast
      of its ducal House of Este--

    Whoe'er in Italy is known to fame,
    This lordly house as frequent guest can claim."

  _Guidebook._


The Schools of Ferrara and Bologna, which, as will be seen, are
substantially one and the same, are interesting both for themselves
and for their influence on others. Two of the greatest of all Italian
painters--Correggio and Raphael--may be claimed as "guests," as it
were, of "this lordly" school. Correggio's master was Francesco
Bianchi of Ferrara, a scholar of Cosimo Tura, and may possibly have
afterwards studied under Francia at Bologna;[22] whilst as for Raphael,
his master, Timoteo Viti, was also a pupil of Francia. The important
influence of this school is natural enough, for the Ferrarese appear
to have had much innate genius for art, and there is a note of
unmistakable originality in their work.

"The Art of the Emilia, the region that lies between the river Po and
the Apennines, has been unduly neglected. Here there once dwelt a
vigorous and gifted race, as original in their way as the Umbrians,
Tuscans or Venetians, who found means of self-expression in form and
colour under the political security of the Court of Este, and whose
art forms an organic whole with stages of development and decay,
characteristically differing, like their dialect, from that of other
parts of Italy.... The traveller visiting the now deserted city of
Ferrara, who meditates on its records of the past, may still in fancy
see erected again the triumphal arches which welcomed emperors, popes
and princes in the 'quattro-cento'; the gilded barges ascending the
river to the city; the platforms draped with the arras, on which were
woven in gold and silk stories of cavaliers in tilt and tourney; the
duke in his robes, stiff with brocade of gold and covered with gems,
bearing a jewelled sceptre in his hand; the magnificently caparisoned
steeds; the princesses who came in their chariots of triumph, to be
brides of the house of Este.... To trace the various processes, alike
of thought, feeling and technique, which have gone to the making of a
masterpiece of Correggio, L'Ortolano or Dosso is a fascinating pursuit.
Only through knowledge of the tentative efforts of their predecessors
at the splendid jovial court of the Este, is it possible to get a
total impression. Born, as elsewhere, in bondage to rigid types and
forms of composition, Ferrarese genius began by being profoundly
dramatic and realistic. The masters of 1450 to 1475, well grounded
in geometry, perspective and anatomy, painted rather what they saw
than what they felt. Their aim was to conventionalise Nature rather
than to transfigure her, and truth was more to them than beauty. The
next generation, 1475 to 1500, developed technique so as to express
movement and emotion, tempered by the eternal charm of antique ideals,
till upon this sure foundation there arose men of high imagination and
sentiment, who grasped and solved the mysteries of tone and colour, as
distinguished from a brilliant palette" (R. H. Benson and A. Venturi
in Burlington Fine Arts Club's Catalogue, 1894). Of the first or
Giottesque period of the school no pictures survive, and the founder
of the school, so far as we can now study it, is Cosimo Tura, who
occupies the same place in the art of Ferrara as Piero della Francesca
occupied in that of Umbria, or Mantegna in that of Padua. Look at his
picture (772): one sees at once that here is something different from
other pictures, one feels that one would certainly be able to recognise
that "rugged, gnarled, and angular" but vigorous style again. Doubtless
there was some Flemish influence upon the school (see the notes on
Tura, No. 772); and doubtless also the Ferrarese were influenced by
the neighbouring school of Squarcione at Padua. But the pictures of
Tura are enough to show how large an original element of native genius
there was. The later developments of this genius are well illustrated
in this room, with the important exception that Dosso Dossi, the
greatest colourist amongst the Ferrarese masters, is very incompletely
represented. His best works are to be seen at Ferrara, Dresden,
Florence, and the Borghese Palace. He has been called "the Titian
of the Ferrarese School," just as Lorenzo Costa has been called its
Perugino and Garofalo its Raphael. Such phrases are useful as helping
the student to compare corresponding pictures in different schools, and
thus to appreciate their characteristics.

The early Bolognese School does not really exist except as an offshoot
of the Ferrarese. Marco Zoppo (590) was "no better," says Morelli,
"than a caricature of his master, Squarcione, and besides, he spent the
greater part of his life at Venice;" whilst Lippo Dalmasii (752) was
very inferior to contemporary artists elsewhere. The so-called earlier
Bolognese School was really founded by the Ferrarese Francesco Cossa
and Lorenzo Costa, who moved to Bologna about 1480, and the latter of
whom "set up shop" with Francia in that town (see under 629). Remarks
on the later "Eclectic" School of Bologna, formed by the Carracci, may
more conveniently be deferred (see p. 35)

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[22] See for Correggio's connection with the Ferrarese-Bolognese
School, Morelli's _German Galleries_, pp. 120-124.




THE UMBRIAN SCHOOL

      "More allied to the Tuscan than to the Venetian spirit, the
      Umbrian masters produced a style of genuine originality. The
      cities of the Central Apennines owed their specific quality
      of religious fervour to the influences emanating from Assisi,
      the headquarters of the _cultus_ of St. Francis. This pietism,
      nowhere else so paramount, except for a short period in Siena,
      constitutes the individuality of Umbria" (J. A. SYMONDS:
      _Renaissance in Italy_, iii. 133).

    Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth
    The Urbinate...
    Well, I can fancy how he did it all,
    Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,
    Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,
    Above and through his art....

  BROWNING: _Andrea del Sarto_.


The Umbrian School, unlike the Florentine, was distinctively
provincial; painting was not centralised in any great capital, but
flourished in small towns and retired valleys--in Perugia, Foligno,
Borgo S. Sepolcro, S. Severino, Rimini (see 2118), etc. Hence the
older traditions of Italian art held their ground, and the religious
feeling of the Middle Ages survived long after it had elsewhere been
superseded. This tendency was confirmed by the spirit of the district.
The little townships of Umbria begirdle the Hill of Assisi, the
hallowed abode of St. Francis, and were the peculiar seats of religious
enthusiasm. Art followed the current of life, just as it did in
Florence or Venice or Padua; and Umbria--"the Galilee," as it has been
called, "of Italy"--thus produced a distinct type in painting, marked
by a quality of sentimental pietism. The influence of Siena, whose
artists worked at Perugia, must have made in the same direction, and it
is interesting to notice in this room one picture of St. Catherine of
Siena (249), and two of her namesake of Alexandria (693, 168). It is
interesting, further, to notice how the "purist" style of landscape,
identified with this pietistic art (see under 288), is characteristic
of the district itself. "Whoever visits the hill-town of Perugia will
be struck," says Morelli, "with two things: the fine, lovely voices
of the women, and the view that opens before the enraptured eye, over
the whole valley, from the spot where the old castle stood of yore. On
your left, perched on a projecting hill that leans against the bare
sunburnt down, lies Assisi, the birthplace of S. Francis, where first
his fiery soul was kindled to enthusiasm, where his sister Clara led
a pious life, and finally found her grave. Lower down, the eye can
still reach Spello and its neighbouring Foligno, while the range of
hills, on whose ridge Montefalco looks out from the midst of its gray
olives, closes the charming picture. This is the gracious nook of
earth, the smiling landscape, in which Pietro Perugino loves to place
his chaste, God-fraught Madonnas, and which in his pictures, like soft
music, heightens the mood awakened in us by his martyrs pining after
Paradise" (_German Galleries_, p. 252). "All is wrought," says another
writer, "into a quietude and harmony that seem eternal. This is one
of the mysterious charms in the Holy Families of Raffaelle and of the
early painters before him: the faces of the Madonnas are beyond the
discomposure of passion, and their very draperies betoken an Elysian
atmosphere which wind never blew" (_Letters of Edward FitzGerald_, i.
45). Such were the local circumstances of the art which, beginning with
the almost grotesque pietism of Niccolò da Foligno (1107), led up to
the "purist ideal" of Perugino and to the first manner of Raphael.

The scattered character of Umbrian art above referred to makes it
impossible for us to trace its course historically. From that point of
view each of the local schools would have to be treated separately. Of
the local schools which were the earliest to develop--Gubbio, Fabriano,
and S. Severine--the first two are not represented here at all, and the
third has only one picture (249). The taste for art amongst the people
of Perugia was much later in developing itself. Even up to 1440 they
had to rely on Sienese artists; and later still they sent for Piero
della Francesca, of Borgo S. Sepolcro, who had studied at Florence and
had greatly advanced the science of perspective. Many of the Umbrian
masters--Melozzo, Palmezzano, Fra Carnovale, Giovanni Santi, and even
perhaps Perugino, were pupils of his. The earliest native artist of
Perugia in the gallery is Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (1103), who, however,
owed much to the Florentine Benozzo Gozzoli. This Fiorenzo was probably
the master of Pinturicchio. The latter worked for some time under
Perugino, who had studied under Piero della Francesca and afterwards
himself went to study in Florence. Perugino in his turn was the
master, after Timoteo Viti, of Raphael. The development of Raphael's
art, leading in its later periods to directions far removed from the
Umbrian ideal, is traced under the biographical notice of that master
(1171). We have thus completed the circle of the principal Umbrian
masters. They are allied, as it will have been seen, by teaching, to
the Florentines, but they retained a distinctive character throughout.
The one exception in this respect is Luca Signorelli, who, though he
was apprenticed to Piero della Francesca, was born nearer to Florence,
and whose affinities are far more with the Florentine than with the
Umbrian School.

[Illustration]




THE VENETIAN AND ALLIED SCHOOLS[23]

      "The Venetian School proposed to itself the representation
      of the effect of colour and shade on all things; chiefly on
      the human form. Here you have the most perfect representation
      possible of colour, and light, and shade, as they affect
      the external aspect of the human form, and its immediate
      accessories, architecture, furniture, and dress. This external
      aspect of noblest nature was the first aim of the Venetians,
      and all their greatness depended on their patience in achieving
      it" (RUSKIN: _Two Paths_, §§ 20, 22).

    Diego answered thus: "I saw in Venice
        The true test of the good and beautiful;
        First, in my judgment, ever stands that school,
    And Titian first of all Italian men is."

  VELAZQUEZ, reported by Boschini, in curious Italian
      verse thus translated by Dr. Donaldson.


The general characteristics of the Venetian School, as defined by Mr.
Ruskin in the passage above quoted, may be traced both to historical
circumstances and to physical surroundings. Thus the first broad fact
to be noticed about the Venetian School of painting is that it is
later than the Florentine by some hundred years or more. From the point
of view of art, Venice, from her intimate connection as a trading
power with the East, was almost a Byzantine colony. St. Mark's is a
Byzantine church, her earliest palaces are Byzantine palaces. And so,
too, for painting she relied exclusively on a Byzantine supply. It was
not till the latter end of the fourteenth century that the influence
of Giotto's works in the neighbouring town of Padua began to rouse
Venice to do and think for herself in art, instead of letting her
Greek subjects do all for her.[24] But by the time Venetian painters
had acquired any real mastery over their art, Venice was already in a
state of great magnificence; her palaces, with their fronts of white
marble, porphyry, and serpentine, were the admiration of every visitor.
Painters paint what they see around them, and hence at the outset we
find in the Venetian School the rendering of material magnificence
and the brilliant colours that distinguish it throughout. Look, for
instance, at the pictures by a comparatively early Venetian, like
Crivelli (see 602); no other painter of a corresponding age showed such
fondness for fruits and stuffs and canopies and jewels and brilliant
architecture. And then, in the second place, there is the colour of
Venice itself, caused by her position on the lagoons. The Venetians
had no gardens; "but what are the purples and scarlets and blues of
iris, anemone, or columbine, dispersed among deep meadow-grasses
or trained in quiet cloister garden-beds, when compared with that
melodrama of flame and gold and rose and orange and azure, which the
skies and lagoons of Venice yield almost daily to the eye?" (Symonds's
_Renaissance_, iii. 255). But, thirdly, the sea had a further influence
on Venetian painting--it caused at once their love of bodily beauty
and the kind of such beauty that they loved. Compare, for instance, a
typical Venetian "beauty," such as Paris Bordone's (674), with one of
Botticelli's (915): how great is the difference between them! Well,
the sea "tends to induce in us great respect for the whole human body;
for its limbs, as much as for its tongue or its wit.... To put the
helm up at the right moment is the beginning of all cunning, and for
that we need arm and eye;--not tongue. And with this respect for the
body as such, comes also the sailor's preference of massive beauty in
bodily form. The landsmen, among their roses and orange-blossoms, and
chequered shadows of twisted vine, may well please themselves with pale
faces, and finely drawn eyebrows and fantastic braiding of hair. But
from the sweeping glory of the sea we learn to love another kind of
beauty; broad-breasted; level-browed, like the horizon;--thighed and
shouldered like the billows;--footed like their stealing foam;--bathed
in clouds of golden hair like their sunsets." Then further, "this
ocean-work is wholly adverse to any morbid conditions of sentiment.
Reverie, above all things, is forbidden by Scylla and Charybdis. By
the dogs and the depths, no dreaming! The first thing required of us
is presence of mind. Neither love, nor poetry, nor piety, must ever
so take up our thoughts as to make us slow or unready." Herein will
be found the source of a notable distinction between the treatment
of sacred subjects by Venetian painters and all others. The first
Venetian artists began with asceticism, just as the Florentines did;
"always, however, delighting in more massive and deep colour than
other religious painters. They are especially fond of saints who have
been cardinals, because of their red hats, and they sunburn all their
hermits into splendid russet brown" (see 768). Then again, through all
enthusiasm they retain a supreme common sense. Look back, for instance,
from the religious pictures in this room, from Titian's "Holy Family"
(635), or Cima's "Madonna" (634), to those of the Umbrians, which we
have just left. The Umbrian religion is something apart from the world,
the Venetian is of it. The religion of the Venetian painters is as real
as that of Fra Angelico. But it was the faith not of humble men or of
mystics, not of profound thinkers or ecstatic visionaries, so much
as of courtiers and statesmen, of senators and merchants, for whom
religion was not a thing by itself but a part and parcel of ordinary
life. "Throughout the rest of Italy, piety had become abstract, and
opposed theoretically to worldly life; hence the Florentine and Umbrian
painters generally separated their saints from living men. They
delighted in imagining scenes of spiritual perfectness;--Paradises,
and companies of the redeemed at the judgment;--glorified meetings
of martyrs;--madonnas surrounded by circles of angels. If, which was
rare, definite portraitures of living men were introduced, these real
characters formed a kind of chorus or attendant company, taking no part
in the action. At Venice all this was reversed, and so boldly as at
first to shock, with its seeming irreverence, a spectator accustomed to
the formalities and abstractions of the so-called sacred schools. The
madonnas are no more seated apart on their thrones, the saints no more
breathe celestial air. They are on our own plain ground--nay, here in
our houses with us." Cima places the Madonna in his own country-side,
whilst at Venice itself Tintoret paints Paradise as the decoration
for the hall of the Greater Council of the State. The religion of the
Venetian School was not less sincere than that of others, but it was
less formal, less didactic; for Venice was constantly at feud with the
popes, and here we come to the last circumstance which need be noticed
as determining the characteristics of the school. "Among Italian cities
Venice was unique. She alone was tranquil in her empire, unimpeded in
her constitutional development, independent of Church interference,
undisturbed by the cross purposes and intrigues of the despots,
inhabited by merchants who were princes, and by a freeborn people
who had never seen war at their gates. The serenity of undisturbed
security, the luxury of wealth amassed abroad and liberally spent at
home, gave a physiognomy of ease and proud self-confidence to all
her edifices.... The conditions of Florence stimulated mental energy
and turned the face of the soul inwards. Those of Venice inclined
the individual to accept life as he found it" (_Symonds_, iii. 259).
Hence the ideal of Venetian painting was "stateliness and power; high
intercourse with kingly and beautiful humanity, proud thoughts, or
splendid pleasures; throned sensualities; and ennobled appetites."

A speciality of the Venetian School arising from the characteristics
we have described is its portraiture. "If there be any one sign by
which the Venetian countenance, as it is recorded for us, to the very
life, by a school of portraiture which has never been equalled (chiefly
because no portraiture ever had subjects so noble),--I say, if there
be one thing more notable than another in the Venetian features, it is
their deep pensiveness and solemnity. In other districts of Italy, the
dignity of the heads which occur in the most celebrated compositions is
clearly owing to the feeling of the painter. He has visibly realised or
idealised his models, and appears always to be veiling the faults or
failings of the human nature around him, so that the best of his work
is that which has most perfectly taken the colour of his own mind; and
the least impressive, if not the least valuable, that which appears to
have been unaffected and unmodified portraiture. But at Venice, all is
exactly the reverse of this. The tone of mind in the painter appears
often in some degree frivolous or sensual; delighting in costume, in
domestic and grotesque incident, and in studies of the naked form. But
the moment he gives himself definitely to portraiture, all is noble
and grave; the more literally true his work, the more majestic; and
the same artist who will produce little beyond what is commonplace
in painting a Madonna or an Apostle, will rise into unapproachable
sublimity when his subject is a Member of the Forty, or a Master of the
Mint" (_Stones of Venice_, vol. iii. ch. iii. § lxxv.).

In its historical development the Venetian School may be divided, like
other schools, into three main periods. First we have the _Giottesque_
or heroic period, or, as it should in the case of Venice be called,
"the Vivarini epoch, bright, innocent, more or less elementary,
entirely religious art, reaching from 1400-1480." Next comes the
Bellini epoch, sometimes classic and mythic as well as religious,
1480-1520. In this period Venetian art is "entirely characteristic of
her calm and brave statesmanship, her modest and faithful religion."
"Bright costumes, distinct and sunny landscapes, broad backgrounds of
architecture, large skies, polished armour, gilded cornices, young
faces of fisher-boys and country girls, grave faces of old men brown
with sea-wind and sunlight, withered faces of women hearty in a hale
old age, the strong manhood of Venetian senators, the dignity of
patrician ladies, the gracefulness of children, the rosy whiteness
and amber-coloured tresses of the daughters of the Adriatic and the
lagoons--these are the source of inspiration to the Venetians of the
second period.... Among the loveliest motives in the altar-pieces of
this period are the boy-angels playing flutes and mandolines beneath
the Madonna on the steps of her throne. They are more earthly than Fra
Angelico's melodists, and yet they are not precisely of human lineage.
It is not, perhaps, too much to say that they strike the keynote of
Venetian devotion, at once real and devoid of pietistic rapture"
(_Symonds_, iii. 266.) Thirdly comes the epoch of "supremely powerful
art corrupted by taint of death," 1520-1600.

This final transition may perhaps best be seen by tracing the similar
progress in the technical feature which distinguishes the Venetian
painters. They are the school of colour. Their speciality consists
in seeing that "shadow is not an absence of colour, but is, on the
contrary, necessary to the full presence of colour; every colour in
painting must be a shadow to some brighter colour, and a light to some
darker one--all the while being a positive colour itself. And the great
splendour of the Venetian School arises from their having seen and held
from the beginning this great fact--that shadow is as much colour as
light, often much more. In Titian's fullest red the lights are pale
rose-colour, passing into white--the shadows warm deep crimson. In
Veronese's most splendid orange the lights are pale, the shadows crocus
colour.... Observe that this is no matter of taste, but fact. It is
an absolute fact that shadows are as much colours as lights are; and
whoever represents them by merely the subdued or darkened tint of the
light, represents them falsely." But in the two earlier periods above
specified, the Venetians are further "separated from other schools by
their contentment with tranquil cheerfulness of light; by their never
wanting to be dazzled. None of their lights are flashing or blinding;
they are soft, winning, precious; lights of pearl, not of lime: only,
you know, on this condition they cannot have sunshine: their day is
the day of Paradise; they need no candles, neither light of the sun,
in their cities; and everything is seen clear, as through crystal, far
or near. This holds to the end of the fifteenth century. Then they
begin to see that this, beautiful as it may be, is still a make-believe
light; that we do not live in the inside of a pearl; but in an
atmosphere through which a burning sun shines thwartedly, and over
which a sorrowful night must far prevail. And then the chiaroscurists
succeed in persuading them of the fact that there is mystery in the
day as in the night, and show them how constantly to see truly, is to
see dimly. And also they teach them the brilliancy of light, and the
degree in which it is raised from the darkness; and instead of their
sweet and pearly peace, tempt them to look for the strength of flame
and coruscation of lightning." Three pictures may be noted in which
the whole process may be traced. First in Bellini's "St. Jerome"[25]
(694) is the serene light of the Master of Peace. In another Bellini
(726) is a first twilight effect--such as Titian afterwards developed
into more solemn hues; whilst in No. 1130 is an example of the light
far withdrawn and the coils of shade of Tintoret. (For Ruskin's general
remarks on the Venetian School see _Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix.
ch. iii.; _Guide to Venetian Academy_; Oxford _Lectures on Art_, §§
134, 173-177.)

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[23] With the pictures of Venice, those of many neighbouring
towns--Brescia, Bergamo, Treviso, and Verona--are associated. All these
local schools have certain peculiarities of their own, and some of them
are well represented here. Nowhere, for instance, out of Brescia itself
can the Brescian School be so well studied as in the National Gallery.
But above these local peculiarities there are common characteristics in
the work of all these schools which they share with that of Venice. It
is only these common characteristics that can here be noticed. (Some
interesting remarks by Dr. Richter, on the independence of the Veronese
School, will be found in _The Art Journal_, February 1895.)

[24] It should, however, be remembered that "before the Venetian
School of painting had got much beyond a lisp, Venetian artists were
already expressing themselves strikingly and beautifully in _stone_, in
architectural and sculptural works" (see Morelli's _German Galleries_,
p. 5).

[25] Now ascribed, however, to Catena.




THE PADUAN SCHOOL

      "Padovani gran dottori" (the Paduans are great scholars)

  _Italian Proverb._


Padua, more than any other Italian city, was the home of the classical
Renaissance in painting. It was at Padua, that is to say, that the
principles which governed classical art were first and most distinctly
applied to painting. The founder of this learned Paduan school[26]
was Squarcione (1394-1474). He had travelled in Italy and Greece, and
the school which he set up in Padua on his return--filled with models
and casts from the antique--enjoyed in its day such a reputation
that travelling princes and great lords used to honour it with their
visits. It was the influence of ancient sculpture that gave the Paduan
School its characteristics. Squarcione was pre-eminently a teacher of
the learned science of linear perspective; and the study of antique
sculpture led his pupils to define all their forms severely and
sharply. "In truth," says Layard, "the peculiarity of this school
consists in a style of conception and treatment more plastic than
pictorial." This characteristic of the school is pointed out below
under some of Mantegna's pictures, but is seen best of all in Gregorio
Schiavone (see especially 630). A second mark of the classical learning
of the school may be observed in the choice of antique embellishments,
of bas-reliefs and festoons of fruits in the accessories. For a third
and crowning characteristic of the school--the repose and self-control
of classical art--the reader is referred to the remarks under
Mantegna's pictures. With Mantegna the school of Padua reached its
consummation. Crivelli's pictures are hung with those of the Paduan
school, for he too is believed to have been a pupil of Squarcione.
But after Mantegna the learning of Padua must be traced not in native
painters, but in its influence on other schools.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[26] The earlier Paduan School, represented in the National Gallery by
No 701, was only an offshoot from the Florentine.




THE LATER ITALIAN SCHOOLS

      "The eclectic school endeavoured to unite opposite partialities
      and weaknesses. They trained themselves under masters of
      exaggeration, and tried to unite opposite exaggerations.
      That was impossible. They did not see that the only possible
      eclecticism had been already accomplished;--the eclecticism
      of temperance, which, by the restraint of force, gains higher
      force; and by the self-denial of delight, gains higher delight"
      (RUSKIN: _Two Paths_, § 59).


The typical painters, with whom this chapter is concerned, are those
of the "Eclectic School" of Bologna--the Carracci, Domenichino, Guido
Reni; and Salvator Rosa, the Neapolitan painter of about the same
period.

It may be noticed, in the first place, that the lower repute in which
these Italian painters of the seventeenth century are now held is of
comparatively recent date. Poussin, for instance, ranked Domenichino
next to Raphael, and preferred the works of the Carracci to all others
in Rome, except only Raphael's, and Sir Joshua Reynolds cited them as
models of perfection. Why, then, is it that modern criticism stamps
the later Italian Schools as schools of the decadence? To examine
the pictures themselves and to compare them with earlier works is
the best way of finding out; but a few general remarks may be found
of assistance. The painting of the schools now under consideration
was "not spontaneous art. It was art mechanically revived during
a period of critical hesitancy and declining enthusiasms." It was
largely produced at Bologna by men not eminently gifted for the
arts. When Ludovico Carracci, for instance, went to Venice, the
veteran Tintoretto warned him that he had no vocation. Moreover "the
painting which emerged there at the close of the sixteenth century
embodied religion and culture, both of a base alloy.... Therefore,
though the painters went on painting the old subjects, they painted
all alike with frigid superficiality. Nothing new or vital, fanciful
or imaginative, has been breathed into antique mythology. What has
been added to religious expression is repellent, ... extravagantly
ideal in ecstatic Magdalens and Maries, extravagantly realistic in
martyrdoms and torments, extravagantly harsh in dogmatic mysteries,
extravagantly soft in sentimental tenderness and tearful piety.... If
we turn from the ideas of the late Italian painters to their execution,
we shall find similar reasons for its failure to delight" (Symonds's
_Renaissance_, vii. 232). For "all these old eclectic theories were
based not upon an endeavour to unite the various characters of nature
(which it is possible to do), but the various narrownesses of taste,
which it is impossible to do.... All these specialities have their
own charm in their own way; and there are times when the particular
humour of each man is refreshing to us from its very distinctness;
but the effort to add any other qualities to this refreshing one
instantly takes away the distinctiveness" (_Two Paths_, § 58). It was
not an attempt to unite the various characters of _nature_. On the
contrary, "these painters, in selecting, omitted just those features
which had given grace and character to their models. The substitution
of generic types for portraiture, the avoidance of individuality, the
contempt for what is simple and natural in details, deprived their work
of attractiveness and suggestion. It is noticeable that they never
painted flowers. While studying Titian's landscapes, they omitted the
iris and the caper-blossom and the columbine, which star the grass
beneath Ariadne's feet.... They began the false system of depicting
ideal foliage and ideal precipices--that is to say, trees which are not
trees, and cliffs which cannot be distinguished from cork or stucco.
In like manner, the cloths wherewith they clad their personages were
not of brocade, or satin, or broadcloth, but of that empty lie called
drapery ... one monstrous nondescript stuff, differently dyed in dull
or glaring colours, but always shoddy. Characteristic costumes have
disappeared.... After the same fashion furniture, utensils, houses,
animals, birds, weapons, are idealised--stripped, that is to say, of
what in these things is specific and vital"[27] (Symonds, _ibid._ p.
233).

With regard to the historical development of the declining art whose
general characteristics we have been discussing, it is usual to group
the painters under three heads--the Mannerists, the Eclectics, and
the Naturalists. By the first of these are meant the painters in the
several schools who succeeded the culminating masters and imitated
their peculiarities. We have already noticed, under the Florentine
School, how this "mannerism" set in, and all the other schools show a
like process. Thus Giulio Romano shows the dramatic energy of Raphael
and Michael Angelo passed into mannerism. Tiepolo is a "mannerised"
Paolo Veronese, Baroccio a "mannerised" Correggio. Later on, however,
and largely under the influence of the "counter-Reformation"--the
renewed activity, that is, of the Roman church consequent on the
Reformation,[28]--a reaction against the Mannerists set in. This
reaction took two forms. The first was that of the Eclectic School
founded by the Carraccis at Bologna in about the year 1580. This
school--so called from its principle of "selecting" the qualities of
different schools--includes, besides the Carraccis themselves, Guido
Reni, Domenichino, Sassoferrato, and Guercino. The last-mentioned,
however, combined in some measure the aims both of the Eclectics and of
the other school which was formed in protest against the Mannerists.
This was the school of the so-called Naturalists, of whom Caravaggio
(1569-1609) was the first representative, and whose influence may be
traced in the Spanish Ribera (see page 220) and the Neapolitan Salvator
Rosa. They called themselves "Naturalists," as being opposed to the
"ideal" aims alike of the Mannerists and the Eclectics; but they made
the fatal mistake--a mistake which seems to have a permanent hold on a
certain order of minds, for it is at the root of much of the art-effort
of our own day--that there is something more "real" and "natural"
in the vulgarities of human life than in its nobleness, and in the
ugliness of nature than in its beauty (see below under 172, and under
Salvator Rosa _passim_).

The later Venetian pictures make a most interesting group. In the
eighteenth century Venetian art experienced a partial revival, and the
painters of this revival--Tiepolo, Longhi, Canaletto, and Guardi may
here be well studied.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[27] It was this false striving after "the ideal," as Mr. Symonds
points out, that caused Reynolds, with his obsolete doctrine about
the nature of "the grand style," to admire the Bolognese masters. For
Reynolds's statement of his doctrine see his _Discourses_, ii. and
iii., and his papers in the _Idler_ (Nos. 79 and 82); for Ruskin's
destructive criticism of it, see _Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv.
ch. i.-iii.

[28] The realism and the morbid taint in the religious pictures of
the Italian decadence were in some measure the direct outcome of
ecclesiastical teaching. "Depict well the flaying of St. Bartholomew,"
said a Jesuit father, "it may win hearts to piety." The comment of
Shelley on the Bolognese Schools was this: "Why write books against
religion when we may hang up such pictures?"




THE EARLY FLEMISH AND THE GERMAN SCHOOLS

      "Why is it, probably, that Pictures exist in the world, and
      to what end was the divine art of Painting bestowed, by the
      earnest gods, upon poor mankind? I could advise once, for a
      little! To make this poor authentic earth a little memorable
      for us. Flaying of St. Bartholomew, Rape of Europa, Rape of the
      Sabines, Piping and Amours of goat-footed Pan, Romulus suckled
      by the Wolf: all this and much else of fabulous, distant,
      unimportant, not to say impossible, ugly and unworthy shall
      pass. But I say, Herewithal is something not phantasmal; of
      indisputable certainty, home-grown" (CARLYLE: _Friedrich_, bk.
      iv. ch. vi., slightly altered).


The Early Flemish and German schools are by no means so completely
represented as the nearly contemporary schools of Italy; but there
are enough pictures to bring out the characteristics of the northern
art. Nothing can be more instructive, and convincing of the value of
art as a means of national autobiography, than to compare the early
pictures in these rooms _en bloc_ with those in any of the Italian
rooms (_e.g._ the Umbrian). No one can fail to be struck at once by
the contrast between what Mr. Ruskin has called "the angular and bony
sanctities of the North," and "the drooping graces and pensive pieties
of the South." This is the first distinguishing character of the early
northern art: there is little feeling, or care, for beauty as such.
Look round the rooms, and see whether there is a single face which
will haunt you for its beauty. Look at the pictures which interest
you most, choose out the brightest and the most exquisitely finished:
and see if it is not an almost defiant absence of beautiful feature
that characterises them. Coupled with their absence of feeling for the
beautiful there is in the work of these artists a strange fondness for
death--for agonies, crucifixions, depositions, exhumations. "It is not
that the person needs excitement or has any such strong perceptions as
would cause excitement, but he is dead to the horror, and a strange
evil influence guides his feebleness of mind rather to fearful images
than to beautiful ones,--as our disturbed dreams are sometimes filled
with ghastlinesses which seem not to arise out of any conceivable
association of our waking ideas, but to be a vapour out of the very
chambers of the tomb, to which the mind, in its palsy, has approached"
(_Modern Painters_, vol. iv. pt. v. ch. xix. § 16). Thus, in painting
scenes from the Passion or stories from the book of martyrs, the
Italians of the earlier time endured the painfulness, the northern
artists rejoiced in it.

What, then, is it that gives these pictures their worth and has
caused their painters to be included amongst the great masters of
the world? Look at some of the best, and the more you look the more
you will see that their goodness consists in an absolute fidelity to
nature--in dress, in ornaments, and especially in portraiture. Here
are unmistakably the men and women of the time, set down precisely
in their habit as they lived. In this grim, unrelenting truthfulness
these pictures correspond exactly to the ideal which Carlyle--himself
a typical northerner--lays down, in the passage above quoted, for the
art of painting.

Look at these pictures and at the Italian again, and another obvious
difference is apparent. The Flemish pictures are on the whole much
smaller. This is a fact full of significance. In the sunny South the
artists spent their best energies in covering large spaces of wall with
frescoes; in the damp climate of the North they were obliged to paint
chiefly upon panels. The conditions of their climate were no doubt what
led to the discovery of the Van Eyck method (described under 186),
the point of which was a way of drying pictures rapidly without the
necessity of exposure to the sun. It was a method only applicable to
work on a small scale, but it permitted such work to be brought to the
highest finish. This precisely suited the painstaking, patient men of
the Low Countries. Hence the minuteness and finish which characterise
their work. Moreover, "every charm that can be bestowed upon so small
a surface is requisite to intensify its attractive power; and hence
Flemish painters developed a jewel-like quality of colouring which
remained peculiar to themselves." ... Further, the Van Eyck method,
requiring absolute forethought and forbidding any alterations, tended
to a set of stock subjects treated more or less in the same way. "Thus
the chief qualities of the Flemish School may be called Veracity
of Imitation, Jewel-like richness of Colour, perfection of Finish,
emphasis of Character, and Conservatism in design. These indeed are
virtues enough to make a school of art great in the annals of time,
even though they may never be able to win for it the clatter of popular
applause. The paintings of Flanders were not, and were not intended to
be, popular. Flemish artists did not, like the Italians, paint for the
folk, but for the delight of a small cultured clique."[29]

Such are the general characteristics of the Early Flemish School.
Passing now to its historical development and to its relations with the
schools of Germany, we may distinguish three successive periods. (1)
The birthplace of painting as a separate art in the North was on the
Lower Rhine, at Maastricht and Cologne. Of this school of the Lower
Rhine a characteristic specimen is No. 687. It is properly grouped with
the Early Flemish School, because in the fourteenth century most of the
Flemish artists were Germans from the valley of the Rhine. (2) Later
on, however, the great development in the prosperity and wealth of the
Low Countries--the land of the Woolsack and the Golden Fleece, led to
the growth of a native art. This was closely connected with the schools
of illuminators patronised by the Courts of France and Burgundy,
and many works of the _Primitifs_ cannot be distinguished, with any
complete certainty, as French or Flemish. Just as at Venice the people,
busy with their trade, preferred for a long time to buy rather than
produce their works of art, but afterwards settled down and made works
for themselves, so in Flanders the German art came to be superseded by
a native Flemish art. The Early Flemish School, covering roughly the
period 1400-1500, was the result, the most important masters being Van
Eyck, Van der Weyden, Bouts, David, and Memlinc. (3.) It was now the
turn of this school to influence that of Germany. The Flemish masters
were great travellers, and the German masters were no doubt attracted
to Flanders by the great technical skill there in vogue. Hence we
now come to a second period in German painting--marked by Flemish
influence. There is less of the mysticism and more realism; but with
the realism there is an element of brutality and ugliness. Nos. 707 and
1049 are typical German pictures of this period.

Finally, it will be noticed, as the visitor goes round the rooms, that
many of the pictures are either altogether "unknown" or are attributed
to artists whose names are not given, and who are merely described as
the "master" of such and such other pictures. This is an interesting
and characteristic point. Of individual painters of the Early German
School, and for the most part of those of the Early Flemish, very
little is known. They seldom signed their names,[30] and the works
of the fifteenth century were in the next two centuries treated with
neglect. Hence both the attribution of these pictures, and the lives of
the painters to whom they are attributed, are still very uncertain. A
second reason for this uncertainty is to be found in the Guild system,
which was very strict amongst the northern artists. Painting, to the
mediæval mind, was a craft like any other, and was subject to the same
rules. The Guild educated the artist and bought his materials, and
even when he emerged into mastership, stood in many ways between him
and his patron. Hence pictures were often regarded as the work not
of this or that individual, but of this or that Guild. Hence too the
quiet industry and the uncompetitive patience of these Early Flemish
painters. "It was not merely the result of chance that the brothers
Van Eyck invented their peculiar method of painting by which they were
enabled to produce pictures of almost unlimited durability and of
unsurpassable finish, provided sufficient care were bestowed upon the
work. The spirit of the day and the method of the day were reflections
one of another.... Take any picture of this old Flemish School, and
regard it carefully, you will find that only so do its beauties strike
you at all.... The old Flemish artists did always the thing that was
within their powers, striving indeed by daily industry to increase the
strength of those powers, but never hoping either by luck or momentary
insanity to attain anything unattainable by patient thought and
long-continued labour. 'Patient continuance in well-doing' was the open
secret of their success" (_Conway_, ch. ii.)

Of the later German School, specially distinguished in portraiture,
the Gallery has now some fine examples, and here again there is
similarity between the German and the early Flemish painters. "If,"
says Ruskin, "the reader were to make the circuit of this collection
for the purpose of determining which picture united in its modes of
execution the highest reach of achievement with the strongest assurance
of durability, we believe that he would finally pause before a small
picture or panel, representing two quaintly dressed figures in a dimly
lighted room." Turn from the portraits by Jan van Eyck to the portraits
by Cranach and Albert Dürer, and much of the same minute fidelity and
careful workmanship will be found. For Holbein's portraits, the reader
is referred to the notes (pp. 613-4).

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Sir W. M. Conway: _Early Flemish Artists and their Predecessors on
the Lower Rhine_, 1887.

[30] The letters often found on pictures, which for a long time excited
the curiosity and imagination of critics, are now fully explained as
the initials not of the painters but of the patrons (see Wauters: _The
Flemish School_, p. 61).




THE DUTCH SCHOOL

    ... Artists should descry abundant worth
    In trivial commonplace, nor groan at dearth
    If fortune bade the painter's craft be plied
    In vulgar town and country!

  ROBERT BROWNING: _Gerard de Lairesse_.


The Dutch and Flemish schools were formerly hung together at the
National Gallery. They are now separated, and with the _early_ Flemish
school we have already dealt. We take up the story here at the point
where it leaves off there, and proceed to discuss the Dutch school;
passing afterwards to the later Flemish school. The confusion between
Dutch and Flemish art is, it may first be remarked, historical. Just as
Flanders derived its earliest artistic impulse from German painters, so
did the Dutch derive theirs from the Flemings. In the two first periods
of Flemish art, Dutch art runs precisely parallel with it. During the
sixteenth century a new development began in both schools. This is the
period of Italian influence, of the "Romanists" or "Italianisers," as
they are called, represented typically by Bernard van Orley and Mabuse.

At the end of the sixteenth century, however, a national movement
began in both schools--corresponding closely to political changes. In
1579 the "Union of Utrecht" was effected, whereby the Dutch "United
Provinces" (= roughly what is now Holland) were separated alike from
the Spanish Netherlands and from the Empire, and Dutch independence
thus began. Within the next fifty years nearly all the great Dutch
painters were born--Berchem, Bol, Cuyp, Frans Hals, Van der Helst,
De Keyser, Rembrandt, Ruysdael. In characteristics, as well as in
chronology, Dutch art was the direct outcome of Dutch history. This
art has come to be identified in common parlance, owing to its chief
and distinguishing characteristic, with what is known as "_genre_
painting,"--the painting, that is, which takes its subject from small
incidents of everyday life. Three historical conditions combined to
bring this kind of painting into vogue. First, the Reformation. The
Dutch, when they asserted their independence, were no longer Catholics;
but Protestantism despised the arts, and hence the arts became entirely
dissociated from religion. There were no more churches to ornament,
and hence no more religious pictures were painted[31] whilst religious
rapture is superseded by what one of their own critics describes as
"the boisterous outbursts which betoken approaching drunkenness"
(Havard: _The Dutch School_, p. 12).[32] Secondly, the Dutch were
Republicans. There was no reigning family. There were no palaces to
decorate, and hence no more historical or mythological pictures were
in demand. This point of distinction may best be remembered by the
supreme contempt which the great King Louis XIV. of France entertained
for the _genre_ style. _Eloignez de mot ces magots_, he said, "take
away the absurd things," when some one showed him some works by
Teniers. But the "plain, simple citizens" of the United Provinces
did not want their faces idealised--hence the prosaic excellence of
Dutch portraiture,--nor had they any ambition to see on their walls
anything but an imitation of their actual lives--of their dykes,
their courtyards, their kitchens, and their sculleries. Thirdly,
the Dutch were a very self-centred people. "With the Dutch," says
Sir Joshua Reynolds (Discourse iv.), "a history piece is properly a
portrait of themselves; whether they describe the inside or outside
of their houses, we have their own people engaged in their own
peculiar occupations; working or drinking, playing or fighting. The
circumstances that enter into a picture of this kind, are so far from
giving a general view of human life, that they exhibit all the minute
particularities of a nation differing in several respects from the rest
of mankind." "Those innumerable _genre_ pieces--conversation, music,
play--were in truth," says Mr. Pater, "the equivalent of novel-reading
for that day; its own actual life, in its own proper circumstances,
reflected in various degrees of idealisation, with no diminution of the
sense of reality (that is to say), but with more and more purged and
perfected delightfulness of interest. Themselves illustrating, as every
student of their history knows, the good-fellowship of family life, it
was the ideal of that life which these artists depicted; the ideal of
home in a country where the preponderant interest of life, after all,
could not well be out of doors. Of the earth earthy,[33] it was an
ideal very different from that which the sacred Italian painters had
evoked from the life of Italy; yet, in its best types, was not without
a kind of natural religiousness. And in the achievement of a type of
beauty so national and vernacular, the votaries of purely Italian art
might well feel that the Italianisers, like Berghem, Bol, and Jan
Weenix, went so far afield in vain" (_Imaginary Portraits_, p. 99).

The same awakening of a national taste made itself felt in the native
school of Dutch landscape--a landscape excellent in many ways, but
cabin'd, cribbed, and confined, like their own dykes. "Of deities or
virtues, angels, principalities, or powers, in the name of our ditches,
no more. Let us have cattle, and market vegetables" (_Modern Painters_,
vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 11). But the Dutch School of landscape
had the qualities of its defects. "The Dutch began to see what a
picture their country was--its canals, and _boompjis_, and endless
broadly-lighted meadows, and thousands of miles of quaint water-side;
and their painters were the first true masters of landscape for its own
sake" (Pater, _ib._ p. 98).

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[31] This statement, like all others in so short and general a summary
as alone can be here attempted, is of course only broadly true.

[32] It is interesting to note that this spirit of anti-religious
revolt is what fascinated Heine in Dutch pictures. "In the house I
lodged at in Leyden there once lived," he says, "the great Jan Steen,
whom I hold to be as great as Raphael. Even as a sacred painter Jan was
as great, and that will be clearly seen when the religion of sorrow
has passed away.... How often, during my stay, did I think myself back
for whole hours into the household scenes in which the excellent Jan
must have lived and suffered. Many a time I thought I saw him bodily,
sitting at his easel, now and then grasping the great jug, 'reflecting
and therewith drinking, and then again drinking without reflecting.' It
was no gloomy Catholic spectre that I saw, but a modern bright spirit
of joy, who after death still visited his old workroom to paint many
pictures and to drink" (Heine's _Prose Writings_, Camelot Series, p.
67).

[33] "The Dutch painters were not poets, nor the sons of poets, but
their fathers rescued a Republic from the slime and covered it with
such fair farms that I declare to this day I like Dutch cheese as
well as any, because it sends one in imagination to the many-uddered
meadows which Cuyp has embossed in gold and silver. What savoury
hares and rabbits they had in the low blunt sand-hills, and how the
Teniers boor snared them, and how the big-breech'd Gunn-Mann (I haven't
any knowledge of Dutch, but I am sure that must be the Dutch for
'sportsman') banged off his piece at them, and then how the shining
Vrow saw them in the Schopp and bargained for them. The Schopp had
often a window with a green curtain in it, and a basso-relievo of
Cupids and goats beneath, with a crack across the bas-relief, and iron
stains on the marble, and a bright brass bulging bottle on the sill,
and such pickling cabbage as makes the mouth water" (_Letters of James
Smetham_, p. 172).




THE LATER FLEMISH SCHOOL


The early history of the Flemish school has been already traced (pp.
38-41). The birth of its later period is almost exactly contemporaneous
with that which has been described in the case of the Dutch school.
In 1598 the Archduke Albert and his consort Isabel established what
was almost an independent State in the Spanish Netherlands (= roughly
Flanders, or the modern Belgium). The "Spanish Fury" was at an end, the
Inquisition was relaxed. Albert and Isabel eagerly welcomed artists
and men of letters, and the exuberant art of Rubens responded to the
call. This is the third and great period in the Flemish school--the
succession being carried on by Rubens's pupils, Van Dyck and Teniers.
Rubens, the greatest master of the Flemish School, was born in 1577
in Germany, but brought up at Antwerp, then the depository of western
commerce, and he coloured every subject that he touched with the same
hues of gay magnificence. It is by his pictures, and those of Van
Dyck, that this room is dominated, and it is unnecessary to anticipate
here the accounts of those masters given below (pp. 111, 130). They
were painters of the Courts. The works of Teniers complete the picture
of Flemish life and manners by taking us among the common people in
country fairs and village taverns.

[Illustration]




THE SPANISH SCHOOL

      "For the learned and the lettered," says a Spanish author in
      the reign of Philip IV., "written knowledge may suffice; but
      for the ignorant, what master is like Painting? They may read
      their duty in a picture, although they cannot search for it in
      books."

      "What we are all attempting," said Sir Joshua Reynolds, "to do
      with great labour, Velazquez does at once."


None of the great schools of painting is so scantily represented in the
National Gallery as the Spanish, although the works in this room by its
greatest master, Velazquez, are of exceptional excellence in quality
and of exceptional interest as illustrating the progress of his art.
The deficiency in Spanish pictures is not peculiar to London. "Spain,"
said Sir David Wilkie, "is the Timbuctoo of artists." The Spanish
School of painters and their history are still only half explored, and
can only be fully studied in Spain itself. "He who Seville (and Madrid)
has not seen, has not seen the marvels great" of Spanish painting.[34]

There are, however, enough examples of the school here to make some few
general remarks desirable. The first point to be noticed is this, that
all the painters represented in the room (with two or three exceptions)
are nearly contemporary. The period 1588-1682 covers all their lives.

They are four of the chief painters of Spain, and they all reach
a high level of technical skill. This fact suggests at once the
first characteristic point in the history of the Spanish School. It
has no infancy.[35] It sprang full-grown into birth. The reason of
this was its Italian origin. The art of painting, except as purely
decorative, was forbidden to the Moors; and it was only in 1492,
when the banner of Castile first hung on the towers of the Alhambra,
that the age of painting, as of other greatness, began for Spain.
But the very greatness of Spain led to Italian influence in art.
The early Spanish painters nearly all found means of going to Italy
(Theotocopuli,--1122--was born there in 1548), and the great Italian
painters were constantly attracted to the Spanish court.

But though Spanish art sprang thus rapidly to perfection under foreign
influence, it was yet stamped throughout with a thoroughly distinctive
character. In the first place the proverbial gravity of the Spaniard
is reflected also in his art. Look round this room, and see if the
prevailing impression is not of something grave, dark, lurid. There
is here nothing of the sweet fancifulness of the early Florentines,
nothing of the gay voluptuousness of the later Venetians. The shadow of
the Spaniard's dark cloak seems to be over every canvas. Then secondly,
Spanish painting is intensely "naturalist." Velazquez exhibits this
tendency at its best: there is an irresistible reality about his
portraits which makes the men alive to all who look at them; Murillo
exhibits it in its excess: his best religious pictures are spoiled by
their too close adherence to ordinary and even vulgar types.

Both these characteristics are partly accounted for by a third.
Painting in Spain was not so much the handmaid, as the bondslave, of
the Church. As the Church was in Spain, so had art to be--monastic,
severe, immutable. "To have changed an attitude or an attribute would
have been a change of Deity." Pacheco, the master of Velazquez, was
charged by the Inquisition to see that no pictures were painted likely
to disturb the true faith. Angels were on no account, he prescribed,
to be drawn without wings. The feet of the Blessed Virgin were on no
account to be exhibited, and she was to be dressed in blue and white,
for that she was so dressed when she appeared to Beatrix de Silva,
a Portuguese nun, who founded the order called after her. One sees
at once how an art, working under such conditions as these, would be
likely to lose free play of fancy. And then, lastly, one may note
how the Spanish church tended also to make Spanish art intensely
naturalistic. Pictures were expected to teach religious dogmas and to
enforce mystical ideas. But, in the inevitable course of superstition,
the symbol passed into a reality. This was more particularly the case
with statues. Everything was done to get images accepted as realities.
To this day they are not only painted but dressed: they have, like
queens, their mistress of the robes. This idea of art--as something
which was not to appeal to the imagination, but was to pass itself off
as a reality--inevitably extended also to Spanish painting. How far it
did so is best shown in a story gravely related by Pacheco. A painter
on a high scaffold had just half finished the figure of the Blessed
Virgin when he felt the whole woodwork on which he stood giving way.
He called out in his horror, "Holy Virgin, hold me," and straightway
the painted arm of the Virgin was thrust out from the wall, supporting
the painter in mid-air! When a ladder was brought and the painter got
his feet on it, the Virgin's arm relapsed and became again only a
painting on the wall. One need not go farther than this story to see
the origin of the realistic character of Spanish art, or to understand
how Murillo, although often the most mystic of all painters in his
conceptions of religious subjects, was also the most naturalistic in
his treatment of them (see W. B. Scott: _Murillo and the Spanish School
of Painting_).

      --> _We now pass into Rooms XVI. and XVII., where pictures of
      the French School are hung._

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[34] On the ground floor small copies of many of the famous pictures at
Madrid may be seen.

[35] This statement, though broadly true, requires, of course, much
modification: see the early Spanish picture (of the 15th century) on
loan in this room from the Victoria and Albert Museum.




THE FRENCH SCHOOL

_ROOMS XVI AND XVII_

    Whate'er Lorraine _light-touch'd_ with _softening_ hue,
    Or _savage_ Rosa _dash'd_, or _learned_ Poussin _drew_.

  THOMSON.


Of the pictures in this room nearly all the more important are the
works of three masters--Claude and the two Poussins. It is of them,
therefore, that a few general remarks will here be made. It should be
noticed in the first place how very different this French School of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is from the French School of
to-day. The latter school is distinguished for its technical skill,
which makes Paris the chief centre of art teaching in the world, but,
also, and still more markedly, for its "excessive realism and gross
sensuality." "A few years ago," adds Professor Middleton, "a gold
medal was won at the Paris _Salon_ by a 'naturalist' picture--a real
masterpiece of technical skill. It represented Job as an emaciated old
man covered with ulcers, carefully studied in the Paris hospitals for
skin diseases." There could not be a greater contrast than between such
art as that and the "ideal" landscapes of Claude, the Bacchanalian
scenes of Poussin, or the soft girl-faces of Greuze.

Confining ourselves now to Claude and the Poussins--with whom, however,
the contemporary works of Salvator Rosa (in Room XIII.) should be
studied, we note that in spite of considerable differences between
them they agree in marking a great advance in the art of landscape
painting. The old conventionalism has now altogether disappeared; there
is an attempt to paint nature as she really is. There are effects of
nature, too,--not shown in any earlier pictures, and here painted for
the first time,--graceful effects of foliage, smooth surface of water,
diffusion of yellow sunlight. In some of these effects Claude has
never been surpassed; but when his pictures are more closely examined,
they are often found to be untrue to the forms of nature. Trees are
not branched, nor rocks formed, nor mountains grouped as Claude and
Poussin represent. Their conception of landscape, and especially of
its relation to human life, is governed by the "classical ideal,"
to which as far as possible they made their pictures approach. This
"classical" landscape is "the representation of (1) perfectly trained
and civilised human life; (2) associated with perfect natural scenery,
and (3) with decorative spiritual powers. (1) There are no signs in
it of humiliating labour or abasing misfortune. Classical persons
must be trained in all the polite arts, and, because their health is
to be perfect, chiefly in the open air. Hence the architecture around
them must be of the most finished kind, the rough country and ground
being subdued by frequent and happy humanity. (2) Such personages
and buildings must be associated with natural scenery, uninjured by
storms or inclemency of climate (such injury implying interruption
of the open air life); and it must be scenery conducing to pleasure,
not to material service; all cornfields, orchards, olive-yards, and
such-like being under the management of slaves, and the superior
beings having nothing to do with them; but passing their lives under
avenues of scented and otherwise delightful trees--under picturesque
rocks and by clear fountains. It is curious, as marking the classical
spirit, that a sailing vessel is hardly admissible, but a galley
with oars is admissible, because the rowers may be conceived as
absolute slaves. (3) The spiritual powers in classical scenery must
be decorative; ornamental gods, not governing gods; otherwise they
could not be subjected to the principles of taste, but would demand
reverence. In order, therefore, as far as possible, without taking
away their supernatural power, to destroy their dignity ... those only
are introduced who are the lords of lascivious pleasures. For the
appearance of any great god would at once destroy the whole theory of
classical life; therefore Pan, Bacchus, and the Satyrs, with Venus
and the Nymphs, are the principal spiritual powers of the classical
landscape" (abridged from _Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. v. §§
1-8).

It may be interesting to point out how entirely this ideal accords with
the prevailing taste and literature of their time. The painting of
Claude and Salvator precisely corresponds to what is called "_pastoral_
poetry, that is to say, poetry written in praise of the country, by
men who lived in coffee-houses and on the Mall[36]-- ... the class
of poetry in which a farmer's girl is spoken of as a 'nymph,' and a
farmer's boy as a 'swain,' and in which, throughout, a ridiculous
and unnatural refinement is supposed to exist in rural life, merely
because the poet himself has neither had the courage to endure its
hardships, nor the wit to conceive its realities.... Examine the
novels of Smollett, Fielding, and Sterne, the comedies of Molière,
and the writings of Johnson and Addison, and I do not think you will
find a single expression of true delight in sublime nature in any one
of them. Perhaps Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_, in its total absence
of sentiment on any subject but humanity ... is the most striking
instance; ... and if you compare with this negation of feeling on one
side, the interludes of Molière, in which shepherds and shepherdesses
are introduced in court dress, you will have a very accurate conception
of the general spirit of the age.[37] It was in such a state of
society that the landscape of Claude, Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator Rosa
attained its reputation. It is the complete expression on canvas of the
spirit of the time" (Edinburgh _Lectures on Architecture and Painting_,
pp. 163-167). The reputation thus gained survived unimpaired almost
into the present century, until Wordsworth in poetry and Turner in
painting led the return to nature, and the modern school of landscape
arose.

It is, however, the art of Constable to which direct influence
must be attributed in the foundation of the modern school of
landscape--_paysage intime_--in France (see Vol. II., pp. 93-4). Of
this school, wholly unrepresented until lately in our National Gallery,
a few examples--characteristic, if not very important--may now be seen
in Room XVII. (see Nos. 2058, 2135, etc.).

--> _We have now concluded our survey of the Foreign Schools. The
western doors in Room XVII. lead down a side staircase into the
entrance Hall, and thus form an exit from the Gallery. On the
staircases leading to the Hall and thence down to the basement, some
foreign pictures are now placed. The visitor who wishes to see the
British School should return into Room XVI. and thence proceed into
the East Vestibule, where a few portraits by British masters are hung.
Descending the steps and ascending those opposite, the visitor will
come into the West Vestibule, which leads to the rooms of the British
School--XVIII., XIX., XX., and XXI. Finally, at the east end of the
Gallery, we reach Room XXII., devoted to the Turner Collection. For
remarks on the British School see Volume II. From the Entrance Hall,
the visitor reaches the West Basement, and by corresponding stairs on
the other side the East Basement. In the Basement Rooms are collections
of copies from Old Masters and the Turner Water Colours. For notes on
the former, see end of this volume; for the Turners, see Volume II._

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[36] Elsewhere Mr. Ruskin speaks of "Twickenham classicism" (with
a side allusion, of course, to Pope) "consisting principally in
conceptions of ancient or of rural life such as have influenced the
erection of most of our suburban villas" (_Pre-Raphaelitism_, reprinted
in _On the Old Road_, i. 283).

[37] In a later lecture on landscape (delivered at Oxford and reported
in Cook's _Studies in Ruskin_, p. 290) Ruskin cited Evelyn (who was
nearly contemporary with Claude) as another case in point: "We passed
through a forest (of Fontainebleau)," says Evelyn, "so prodigiously
encompass'd with hideous rocks of white hard stone, heaped one on
another in mountainous height, that I think the like is nowhere to be
found more horrid and solitary." It is interesting to note how long
this ignorance of mountains lasted, even amongst painters. James Barry,
the R. A., was "amazed at finding the realities of the Alps grander
than the imaginations of Salvator," and writes to Edmund Burke from
Turin in 1766 to say that he saw the moon from the Mont Cenis five
times as big as usual, "from being so much nearer to it"!




NUMERICAL CATALOGUE, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES

N. B.--_The pictures here described are pictures belonging to Foreign
Schools only. The numerals refer to the numbers on the frames._

_Pictures in the National Gallery to which, because they are deposited
on loan or for other reasons, no numbers are attached, are described at
the end of the Numerical Catalogue._

_References to books in the following pages are, except where otherwise
stated, to the works of Ruskin. Wherever possible, the references to
his books are by sections and paragraphs, instead of by pages, so as to
make them applicable to all the different editions. The references to
Vasari are to Bohn's translation, 5 vols., 1855._


1. THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.

  _Sebastiano del Piombo_ (Venetian: 1485-1547).

      This large picture is generally accounted the masterpiece of
      Sebastiano Luciani. He was called _del Piombo_ (lead), from
      his holding the office of Keeper of the Leaden Seal (see No.
      20). Sebastiano was originally a painter and musician at
      Venice, where he studied successively under John Bellini and
      Giorgione. But in 1512 he was invited to Rome by the famous
      banker Agostino Chigi. Here he fell under the influence of
      Michael Angelo, who employed Sebastiano to execute several of
      his designs, and saw in him a means, says Vasari, of outdoing
      Raphael. The opportunity occurred when the Cardinal Giulio de'
      Medici commissioned Raphael to paint the "Transfiguration"
      (now in the Vatican), and at the same time Sebastiano to
      paint this picture, on the same scale, of the Raising of
      Lazarus. The pictures when finished were exhibited side by
      side, and there were some who preferred Sebastiano's. "The
      picture was painted," says Vasari, "with the utmost care,
      under the direction, and in some parts with the design, of
      Michael Angelo." There are in the British Museum two original
      drawings by Michael Angelo which are evidently preparatory
      studies for the figure of Lazarus; but Sebastiano cannot have
      painted under his friend's direction, for Michael Angelo was
      at Florence at the time, and Sebastiano writes to him, "There
      has been some delay with my work. I have endeavoured to keep
      it back as long as possible, that Raphael might not see it
      before it is finished.... But now I do not hesitate any more. I
      believe I shall not, with my work, bring discredit upon you."
      Another masterpiece of Sebastiano has recently been added to
      the Gallery (1450), which also contains two of his portrait
      pieces (20 and 24), a branch of art in which he obtained great
      success; Vasari particularly notices his skill in painting the
      head and hands.

This famous picture is especially remarkable for its dramatic unity.
It is crowded with figures, but all combine to concentrate attention
on the central subject. The time chosen by the painter is after the
completion of the miracle: "He that was dead came forth, bound hand and
foot with grave-clothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin."
Jesus in the middle of the picture is uttering the words, "Loose him,
and let him go;" with his right hand Jesus points to heaven, as if he
said, "I have raised thee by the power of him who sent me." The three
men, who have already removed the lid of the sepulchre, are fulfilling
Christ's command. The grave-clothes, by which the face of Lazarus is
thrown into deep shade, express the idea of the night of the grave
which but just before enveloped him; and the eye looking eagerly
from beneath the shade upon Christ shows the new life in its most
intellectual organ. To the left, behind Christ, is St. John, answering
objections raised against the credibility of the miracle. Farther off,
behind this group, is one of the Pharisees, whose unbelief is combated
by the man who points in evidence to the raised Lazarus. Behind Lazarus
is his sister Martha, sickening now at what she most desired; behind
her are other women--holding their noses.[38] At the foot of Jesus is
the other sister, Mary, full of faith and gratitude--

    Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,
      Nor other thought her mind admits
      But, he was dead, and there he sits,
    And he that brought him back is there.

    Then one deep love doth supersede
      All other, when her ardent gaze
      Roves from the living brother's face,
    And rests upon the Life indeed.

  TENNYSON: _In Memoriam_, xxxii.


2. CEPHALUS AND PROCRIS.

  _Claude Lorraine_ (French: 1600-1682).

      Claude Gellée was the son of humble parents, and to the end he
      was an unlettered man. He was born in the village of Champagne,
      in the Vosges, Duchy of Lorraine, and thence acquired the name
      of _Le Lorrain_. Lineal descendants of Claude's brother still
      live in the village, and the house in which he was born is
      now preserved as a museum of relics of the painter. He was
      brought up, it is said, as a pastry-cook, but he entered the
      household of Agostino Tassi, a Perugian landscape painter, at
      Rome, in the capacity of general factotum, cooking his master's
      meals and grinding his colours. From him Claude received his
      first instruction in art. Subsequently he travelled to the
      Tyrol and to Venice--the influence of which place may be seen
      in the "gentle ripples of waveless seas" in his Seaports.
      After working for some time at Nancy, the capital of Lorraine,
      he returned in October 1627 to Rome, and there settled down
      for the remainder of his life. The house which he inhabited
      may still be seen at the angle of the streets Sistina and
      Gregoriana. Of his life at Rome many interesting particulars
      are given by his friend Sandrart, a German painter, who was for
      some years his companion. "In order," says Sandrart, "that he
      might be able to study closely the innermost secrets of nature,
      he used to linger in the open air from before daybreak even to
      nightfall, so that he might learn to depict with a scrupulous
      adherence to nature's model the changing phases of dawn, the
      rising and setting sun, as well as the hours of twilight....
      In this most difficult and toilsome mode of study he spent
      many years; making excursions into the country every day, and
      returning even after a long journey without finding it irksome.
      Sometimes I have chanced to meet him amongst the steepest
      cliffs at Tivoli, handling the brush before those well-known
      waterfalls, and painting the actual scene, not by the aid of
      imagination or invention, but according to the very objects
      which nature placed before him."[39] (One of these sketches
      is now in the British Museum.) On one expedition to Tivoli,
      Claude was accompanied, we know, by Poussin, but for the most
      part he lived a secluded life; "he did not," says Sandrart, "in
      everyday life much affect the civilities of polite society."
      Such seclusion must partly have been necessary to enable
      Claude to cope with the commissions that crowded in upon him.
      For the Pope Urban VIII. he painted the four pictures now in
      the Louvre, and the three succeeding popes were all among his
      patrons. So was Cardinal Mazarin and the Duke of Bouillon, the
      Papal Commander-in-Chief, for whom amongst other pictures he
      painted two (12 and 14) in this Gallery. England was a great
      buyer of his works: nineteen were ordered from here in 1644
      alone; and commissions came also from Denmark and the Low
      Countries. One sees the pressure of a busy man in the number
      of "stock" subjects which he repeated. He suffered much too
      from forgers, and it was partly to check the sale of fictitious
      Claudes that he prepared his "Liber Veritatis"--a collection
      of drawings of all his pictures, now in the possession of
      the Duke of Devonshire. Two hundred and seventy more of his
      drawings may be seen in the British Museum. For his figures,
      however, he was glad of outside help, and many painters put
      these in for him. The soft, pensive, and almost feminine charm
      which characterises his landscapes well agree with what we know
      of his life. He was passionately fond of music. To a little
      girl, "living with me and brought up in my house in charity,"
      he bequeathed much of his treasures. He had received also a
      poor, lame lad into his house, whom he instructed in painting
      and music, and who rewarded him by demanding arrears of salary
      for "assistance." Towards his poor relations he was uniformly
      generous, and when Sandrart left him it was a nephew from the
      Vosges whom he called to keep house for him.

      With regard to the characteristics of Claude's art, his general
      position in the history of landscape painting has been defined
      in the chapter on the French School, and some further points
      of detail are noticed under his several works. Here, however,
      it may be convenient to give Ruskin's summary of the matter.
      (1) Claude had a fine feeling for beauty of form, and is seldom
      ungraceful in his foliage. His tenderness of conception is
      especially shown in delicate aerial effects, such as no one
      had ever rendered before, and in some respects, no one has
      ever done in oil-colour since. But their character appears to
      rise rather from a delicacy of bodily constitution in Claude
      than from any mental sensibility; such as they are, they give
      a kind of feminine charm to his work, which partly accounts
      for its wide influence. To whatever their character may be
      traced, it renders him incapable of enjoying or painting
      anything energetic or terrible. Thus a perfectly genuine and
      untouched sky of Claude is beyond praise in all qualities of
      air. But he was incapable of rendering great effects of space
      and infinity. (2) As with his skies, so too with his seas.
      They are the finest pieces of water painting in ancient art.
      But they are selections of the particular moment when the
      sea is most insipid and characterless. (3) He had sincerity
      of purpose; but in common with the other landscape painters
      of his day, neither earnestness, humility, nor love, such
      as would ever cause him to forget himself. Hence there is
      in his work no simple or honest record of any single truth,
      and his pictures, when examined with reference to essential
      truth, are one mass of error from beginning to end. So far as
      he felt the truth, he tried to be true; but he never felt it
      enough to sacrifice supposed propriety, or habitual method,
      to it. Very few of his sketches and none of his pictures show
      evidence of interest in other natural phenomena than the
      quiet afternoon sunshine which would fall methodically into a
      composition.[40] One would suppose he had never seen scarlet
      in a morning cloud, nor a storm burst on the Apennines. (4)
      He shows a peculiar incapacity of understanding the main
      point of a matter, and of men of name is the best instance
      of a want of imagination, nearly total, borne out by painful
      but untaught study of nature, and much feeling for abstract
      beauty of form, with none whatever for harmony of expression.
      (5) Yet in spite of all his deficiencies Claude effected a
      revolution in art. This revolution consisted in setting the
      sun in heaven. We will give him the credit of this with no
      drawbacks.[41] Till Claude's time no one had seriously thought
      of painting the sun but conventionally; that is so say, as a
      red or yellow star (often), with a face in it, under which
      type it was constantly represented in illumination; else it
      was kept out of the picture, or introduced in fragmentary
      distances, breaking through clouds with almost definite rays.
      Claude first set it in the pictorial heaven (collected from
      _Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. §§ 3, 5,
      14, sec. iii. ch. i. § 9, ch. iii. §§ 13-15, 17; vol. ii. pt.
      iii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 18; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. §§ 22,
      27, and Appendix i.; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. v. §§ 10, 11). This
      summary should show that it is a mistake to represent Ruskin
      as blind to the merits of Claude. He has done full justice
      to Claude's amenity and pensive grace; to the beauty of his
      skies and the skill and charm of his aerial effects. At the
      time when Ruskin began to write _Modern Painters_, Claude was
      still accounted the prince of all landscape painters. The
      estimate of Claude against which Ruskin protested may be found
      in Goethe. "Claude Lorraine," he said, "knew the real world
      thoroughly, even to its smallest detail, and he made use of it
      to express the world contained in his own beautiful soul. He
      stands to nature in a double relation,--he is both her slave
      and her master: her slave, by the material means which he is
      obliged to employ to make himself understood; her master,
      because he subordinates these material means to a well reasoned
      inspiration, to which he makes them serve as instruments."
      And elsewhere, Goethe expresses his admiration for the depth
      and grasp of Claude's powers. Ruskin, in vindicating the
      greater sweep and depth of Turner's genius, fastened with all
      the emphasis of an advocate upon the weak points in Claude's
      artistic and intellectual armoury. By so doing he cleared the
      ground for a truer appreciation of Claude. As a corrective
      or supplement to Ruskin's adverse criticisms, the reader may
      be referred to Constable's enthusiastic appreciations. "I
      do not wonder," wrote Constable to his wife, "at you being
      jealous of Claude. If anything could come between our love,
      it is him.... The Claudes, the Claudes are all, all, I can
      think of here" (Leslie's _Life of Constable_, 1845, p. 121).
      Constable was writing from Sir George Beaumont's house, where
      several of the Claudes, now in the National Gallery, were then
      hanging. Constable, however, was alive to some of Claude's
      defects. "Claude's exhilaration and light," he wrote to Leslie,
      "departed from him when he was between fifty and sixty, and he
      then became a professor of the 'higher walks of art,' and fell
      in a great degree into the manner of the painters around him;
      so difficult is it to be natural, so easy to be superior in
      our own opinion. When we have the pleasure of being together
      at the National Gallery I think I shall not find it difficult
      to illustrate these remarks, as Carr has sent a large picture
      of the latter description" (_ibid._, p. 221). The picture in
      question is No. 6, painted in 1658.

For the story of Cephalus, who is here receiving from Procris the
presents of Diana, the hound Lelaps, and the fatal dart with which
she was killed, see under 698. As for the landscape, Mr. Ruskin cites
this picture as an instance of the "childishness and incompetence" of
Claude's foregrounds.

"I will not," he writes, "say anything of the agreeable composition
of the three banks, rising one behind another from the water, except
only that it amounts to a demonstration that all three were painted
in the artist's study, without any reference to nature whatever. In
fact, there is quite enough intrinsic evidence in each of them to
prove this, seeing that what appears to be meant for vegetation upon
them amounts to nothing more than a green stain on their surfaces,
the more evidently false because the leaves of the trees twenty yards
farther off are all perfectly visible and distinct; and that the sharp
lines with which each cuts against that beyond it are not only such
as crumbling earth could never show or assume, but are maintained
through their whole progress ungraduated, unchanging, and unaffected
by any of the circumstances of varying shade to which every one of
nature's lines is inevitably subjected. In fact the whole arrangement
is the impotent struggle of a tyro to express by successive edges that
approach of earth which he finds himself incapable of expressing by the
drawing of the surface. Claude wished to make you understand that the
edge of his pond came nearer and nearer; he had probably often tried to
do this with an unbroken bank, or a bank only varied by the delicate
and harmonious anatomy of nature: and he had found that owing to his
total ignorance of the laws of perspective such efforts on his part
invariably ended in his reducing his pond to the form of a round O, and
making it look perpendicular. Much comfort and solace of mind in such
unpleasant circumstances may be derived from instantly dividing the
obnoxious bank into a number of successive promontories, and developing
their edges with completeness and intensity" (_Modern Painters_, vol.
i. pt. ii. sec. iv. ch. iv. §§ 17, 18).


3. A CONCERT.

  _School of Titian_ (Venetian). _See under next picture._

      The young man in the red velvet cap plays on the violoncello;
      the other on the oboe, of which only the reed is visible. The
      other three are vocalists. The master is keeping time, and is
      intent on the boy pupil. The young girl, with her hand on her
      husband's shoulder, is waiting to chime in, and looks far away
      the while to where the music takes her. "In Titian's portraits
      you always see the soul,--faces 'which pale passion loves.'
      Look at the Music-piece by Titian--it is 'all ear,'--the
      expression is evanescent as the sounds--the features are seen
      in a sort of dim _chiaroscuro_, as if the confused impressions
      of another sense intervened--and you might easily suppose some
      of the performers to have been engaged the night before in

        Mask or midnight serenade
    Which the starved lover to his mistress sings
        Best quitted with disdain."

  (HAZLITT: _Criticisms on Art_, edition 1843, p. 10).

Perhaps it is indeed a travelling party of musicians practising for
a serenade. Certainly one thinks of this picture as one reads of a
supper party at Titian's house. "Before the tables were set out, we
spent the time in looking at the lifelike figures in the excellent
paintings of which the house was full, and in discussing the real
beauty and charm of the garden, which was a pleasure and a wonder to
every one. It is situated in the extreme part of Venice upon the sea,
and from it may be seen the pretty little island of Murano, and other
beautiful places. This part of the sea, as soon as the sun went down,
swarmed with gondolas adorned with beautiful women, and resounded with
varied harmonies--the music of voices and instruments till midnight"
(Priscianese, describing a visit to Titian in 1540: cited in Heath's
_Titian_, "Great Artists" series, p. 53).


4. A HOLY FAMILY.

  _Titian_ (Venetian: 1477-1576).

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

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

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

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


5. A SEAPORT AT SUNSET.

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

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


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

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

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


7, 37. GROUPS OF HEADS.

  _After Correggio. See under 10._

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


8. A DREAM OF HUMAN LIFE.

  _From a design by Michael Angelo. See 790._

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

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

  GRAY: _Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College_.


9. "LORD, WHITHER GOEST THOU?"

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

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

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


10. THE EDUCATION OF CUPID.

  _Correggio_ (Parmese: 1494-1534).

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

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

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

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


11. ST. JEROME.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


13. THE HOLY FAMILY.

  _Murillo_ (Spanish: 1618-1682).

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

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

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


14. SEAPORT: THE QUEEN OF SHEBA.

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

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

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


15. ECCE HOMO!

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

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

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


16. ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON.

  _Tintoretto_ (Venetian: 1518-1594).

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

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

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

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

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


17. THE HOLY FAMILY.

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

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


18. CHRIST AND THE PHARISEES.[61]

  _Bernardino Luini_ (Lombard: about 1475-1533).

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

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


19. NARCISSUS AND ECHO.

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

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

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

  _Ionica._

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


20. IPPOLITO DE' MEDICI AND THE ARTIST.

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

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


21. PORTRAIT OF A FLORENTINE LADY.

  _Cristofano Allori_ (Florentine: 1577-1621).

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

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


22. ANGELS WEEPING OVER THE DEAD CHRIST.

  _Guercino_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1591-1666).

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

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


23. "THE VIRGIN OF THE BASKET."

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

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

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


24. AN ITALIAN LADY AS ST. AGATHA.

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

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


25. ST. JOHN IN THE WILDERNESS.

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

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


26. THE CONSECRATION OF ST. NICHOLAS.

  _Paolo Veronese_ (Veronese: 1528-1588).

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

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

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


27. THE POPE JULIUS II.

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

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

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


28. SUSANNAH AND THE ELDERS.

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

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

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


29. "OUR LADY OF THE CAT."

  _Baroccio_ (Umbrian: 1528-1612).

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

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


30. SEAPORT: ST. URSULA.

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

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

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


31. THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC.

  _Gaspard Poussin_ (French: 1613-1675).

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

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

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

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

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


32. THE RAPE OF GANYMEDE.

  _School of Titian. See under 4._

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

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

  TENNYSON: _Palace of Art_.

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


33. THE VISION OF ST. JEROME.

  _Parmigiano_ (Parmese: 1503-1540).

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

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

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


34. VENUS AND ADONIS.

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

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

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

  SHAKESPEARE: _Venus and Adonis_.

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


35. BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


36. A LAND STORM.

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

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


37. _See under_ 7.


38. THE ABDUCTION OF THE SABINE WOMEN.

  _Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640).

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

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

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

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


39. THE NURSING OF BACCHUS.

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

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

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

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


40. LANDSCAPE: PHOCION.

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

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


41. THE DEATH OF PETER MARTYR.

  _Ascribed to Cariani. See under_ 1203.

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


42. A BACCHANALIAN FESTIVAL.

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

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

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

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


43. CHRIST TAKEN DOWN FROM THE CROSS.

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

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


44. A BLEACHING GROUND.

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

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


45. THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY.

  _Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669).

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

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

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

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


46. THE BLESSINGS OF PEACE

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

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

The circumstances under which the picture was painted gave the clue to
its meaning. Rubens came to urge Charles to conclude peace, and here
on canvas he sets forth its blessings. In the centre of the picture is
the Goddess of _Wisdom_, with Minerva's helmet on her head, her right
hand resting on her spear, now to be used no more. Before her flies
_War_, reluctantly, as if he dared not resist Wisdom, yet employing
his shield, in order still to shelter _Discord_, with her torch now
extinguished. Last of all in the hateful train is _Malice_, whose
very breath is fire, and who "endeth foul in many a snaky fold"--in
the serpent's folds, which ever attend the hostilities of nations.
Beneath Minerva's protection sits _Peace_ enthroned, and gives the milk
of human kindness for babes to suck. From above, Zephyrus, the soft
warm wind, descends with the olive wreath--the emblem in all ages of
public peace, whilst at her side stands the "all-bounteous Pan," with
Amalthea's storied Horn of _Plenty_. A band of happy children, led by
_Love_ (whose torch, now that Discord's is gone out, burns aloft),
approach to taste the sweets of Peace, and to minister to abundance.
In the train of Plenty comes _Opulence_, bringing goblets, wreaths
of pearl, and other treasures; whilst behind is _Music_, playing on
her tambourine to celebrate the arts of peace. Last of all in the
foreground is a leopard, not hurting or destroying any more, but
playful as a lamb--

    All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail;
    Returning Justice lift aloft her scale;
    Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend,
    And white-rob'd Innocence from heaven descend....
    No more shall nation against nation rise,
    Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes....
    The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead,
    And boys in flowery bands the tiger lead.

  POPE: _Messiah_.


47. THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.

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

A characteristic piece of "Bible by candle-light." There is, however,
something spiritually instructive, as well as technically skilful,
in the way in which such light there is all proceeds from Him who
came to be the light of the world: compared with this divine light
that in the lantern of the shepherds pales and is ineffectual. The
picture is dated 1646. For the most part, however, the picture is a
piece of pure realism, which may be contrasted in an instructive way
with the essentially religious art of earlier schools. Here there is
little, if any, symbolism, and "the decorative qualities with which
a painter like Botticelli appealed to the imagination to heighten
the impressiveness of the story have vanished also. In their stead
we have pure naturalism,--naturalism of a very refined and cultured
order, which appeals to the imagination as powerfully, but in a
totally different way. The charm of the picture is independent of any
exegetical qualities. Rembrandt treats the Nativity as a natural event,
in a scientific spirit. The only connection between this picture and
religious art is that it represents certain conventional attributes
which are common to both. But just so much as we subtract from it as
an exponent of strictly religious thought, just so much must we add to
it as appealing to the intellect in general; its impressiveness, its
sublimity, and its suggestiveness, and it has all these, are evolved
out of the phenomena of natural effects by a poetical process" (J. E.
Hodgson, R.A., in _Magazine of Art_, 1890, p. 42).


48. LANDSCAPE, WITH TOBIAS AND THE ANGEL.

  _Domenichino_ (Eclectic-Bologna, 1581-1641).

      Domenico Zampieri, called Domenichino for his small stature,
      was born at Bologna, the son of a shoemaker. He entered the
      school of the Carracci, and afterwards was invited to Rome
      by Albani, in whose house he lived. Here he soon acquired
      a great reputation, and was taken by Annibale Carracci as
      assistant in the execution of the frescoes of the Farnese
      Palace. The Cardinals Borghese and Aldobrandini were also among
      his patrons. In 1617 he revisited Bologna, where he married.
      In 1621 he was recalled to Rome by the Pope Gregory XV., who
      appointed him principal painter and architect to the pontifical
      palace. Some of the villas at Frascati were designed by him.
      In 1630 he was invited to Naples to decorate the Cappella del
      Tesoro of the Duomo, a commission which Guido Reni sought in
      vain. Here Domenichino incurred the hostility of the Neapolitan
      painters, and the machinations of the notorious triumvirate,
      the "Cabal of Naples," were suspected of causing his death.
      At Rome also he had been much persecuted by rival artists.
      Accusations of plagiarism were levelled at him, and his more
      pushing competitors "decried him to such a degree that he
      was long destitute of all commissions." It is interesting
      to contrast the conditions of (literally) "cut-throat
      competition," under which the Italian painters of the decadence
      worked, with the Guild System of the Flemish and the honourable
      time and piece-work of the earlier Italians.

      The varying fortunes of Domenichino's fame form a curious
      chapter in the history of taste. In his own time and down to
      the end of the eighteenth century he was ranked among the
      greatest masters. Poussin placed him next to Raphael. Bellori
      attributed to him "the same wand which belongs to the poetical
      enchanters." Sir Joshua Reynolds speaks of him with high
      respect, and Lanzi describes him as the admiration of all
      professors, and records the enormous price which his pictures
      still fetched (1809). Against these panegyrics we may set
      Ruskin's invectives. "I once supposed," he says, "that there
      was some life in the landscape of Domenichino, but in this I
      must have been wrong. The man who painted the 'Madonna del
      Rosario' and 'Martyrdom of St. Agnes' in the gallery of Bologna
      is palpably incapable of doing anything good, great, or right,
      in any field, way, or kind whatsoever.... Whatever appears
      good in any of the doings of such a painter must be deceptive,
      and we may be assured that our taste is corrupted and false
      whenever we feel disposed to admire him.... I am prepared to
      support this position, however uncharitable it may seem; a
      man may be tempted into a gross sin by passion and forgiven,
      and yet there are some kinds of sins into which only men of
      a certain kind can be tempted, and which cannot be forgiven.
      It should be added, however, that the artistical qualities
      of these pictures are in every way worthy of the conceptions
      they realise; I do not recollect any instance of colour or
      execution so coarse and feelingless." Domenichino and the
      Carraccis were, says Ruskin elsewhere, mere "art-weeds." "Their
      landscape, which may in few words be accurately described as
      'scum of Titian,' possesses no single merit, nor any ground
      for the forgiveness of demerit." "The flight of Domenichino's
      angels is a sprawl paralysed." "They are peculiarly offensive,
      studies of bare-legged children howling and kicking in volumes
      of smoke" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch.
      vii. § 13; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. v. § 17; vol. iii.
      pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 20; _Stones of Venice_, travellers'
      edition, vol. ii. ch. vi.; _On the Old Road_, vol. i. § 91).
      Ruskin's estimate, "though expressed with such a clangour of
      emphasis," yet fairly represents, as Mr. Symonds says, the
      feeling of modern students. Perhaps, however, the reaction
      against the once worshipped pictures of Domenichino has gone
      too far. His celebrated "Diana and her Nymphs" in the Borghese
      Gallery is "a charming picture," says Morelli, "worthy of a
      purer period of art. Full of cheerful animation and naïve
      and delightful details, it cannot fail to please" (_Roman
      Galleries_, p. 228). Of the moral obliquity which Ruskin seems
      to impute, Domenichino must be acquitted. He appears to have
      been a simple, modest, painstaking, and virtuous person. "He
      was misled by his dramatic bias, and also by the prevalent
      religious temper of his age. That he belonged to a school which
      was essentially vulgar in its choice of type, to a city never
      distinguished for delicacy of taste, and to a generation which
      was rapidly losing the sense of artistic reserve, suffices
      to explain the crude brutality of the conceptions which he
      formed of tragic episodes" (Symonds, _Renaissance_, vii. 220).
      Lanzi says with truth that Domenichino's style of painting
      is "almost theatrical." He tears the passion of his figures
      to tatters--"exaggerated action destroying," as Ruskin says,
      "all appearance of intense feeling." An interesting tale is
      told of the way in which the artist worked himself up. He was
      engaged on a scene of martyrdom, and "in painting one of the
      executioners he actually threw himself into a passion, using
      threatening words and actions. Annibale Carracci, surprising
      him at that moment, embraced him, exclaiming with joy, 'To-day,
      my Domenichino, thou art teaching me.'"

Tobias, directed by the angel, is drawing out of the water the fish
that attacked him. _See_ the Book of Tobit, ch. vi. 4, 5, and the note
on No. 781.


49. THE PORTRAIT OF RUBENS.

  _Van Dyck_ (Flemish: 1599-1641).

      Sir Anthony Van Dyck, the prince of court portrait-painters
      and the most famous of Rubens's pupils, is one of the many
      great artists whose gifts showed themselves almost from birth.
      He was born at Antwerp, the seventh child of a tradesman in
      good circumstances. His mother was a woman of taste, who
      attained considerable skill in art-needlework, and from her
      he doubtless derived many of the qualities for which his
      works are conspicuous. At the age of ten the boy had already
      begun to paint. His admission at the age of thirteen to the
      crowded studio of Rubens is a proof of his precocious talent.
      Documents recently discovered show that Van Dyck when seventeen
      had already pupils of his own, and that his independent work
      was sought after by artists and amateurs. At nineteen he was
      admitted to the painters' Guild of St. Luke. For five years
      (1620-25) he was for the most part travelling and painting
      in Italy, with introductions from Rubens. Many of his best
      works are still to be seen in Genoa and Turin. He also visited
      Venice, where the spell of Titian's genius enchanted him.
      Several sketches in the British Museum testify to his devout
      study of the great Venetian. On his return to Antwerp at the
      end of 1625, Van Dyck soon became the great court-painter of
      his time. Queens visited him in his studio, and the nobility
      of three nations considered it an honour to be painted by him.
      Religious pictures were also produced by him at this time
      with amazing rapidity. In 1632 he came to England. He had
      already paid a short visit in 1620-21, when he had painted
      James I., and was in receipt of a grant from the Exchequer
      "for special service performed for His Majesty." This first
      visit to England seems to have been due to the initiative
      of the celebrated connoisseur, the Earl of Arundel. At the
      court of Charles I. Van Dyck came at once into the highest
      favour. Sir Kenelm Digby, a gentleman of the bedchamber, was
      his bosom friend, and on his first presentation to Charles I.
      he obtained permission to paint the king and queen. He was
      appointed painter to the court, was knighted, and received a
      pension of £200. A town-house was given him at Blackfriars,
      and a country-house at Eltham. He "always went magnificently
      dressed, had a numerous and gallant equipage, and kept so good
      a table in his apartment that few princes were more visited
      or better served." In England alone there are said to be
      twenty-four portraits of the king by Van Dyck, and twenty-five
      of Queen Henrietta Maria. Every one of distinction desired to
      have his or her features immortalised by the court-painter,
      and for seven years he worked at the portraits of the English
      aristocracy with indefatigable industry. Some 300 of these
      portraits exist in this country. The painter's health gradually
      began to fail, from the constant drain upon his strength
      caused by the incessant labour necessary to procure the means
      of gratifying his luxurious tastes, and also by his irregular
      mode of life. Van Dyck, says Mr. Law in his Catalogue of the
      Hampton Court Gallery, "loved beauty in every form, and found
      the seduction of female charms altogether irresistible." In
      1639 he married Mary Ruthven, grand-daughter of the unfortunate
      Lord Ruthven, Earl of Gowrie--a marriage promoted by the king,
      who hoped thereby to effect a change in the painter's habits
      of life. Margaret Lemon, the celebrated beauty, who lived with
      Van Dyck for some time at Blackfriars, resented the marriage
      most bitterly, and tried to maim the painter's right hand. In
      1640-41 he travelled abroad with his wife, but returned to
      this country a dying man. The king offered a special reward to
      any doctor who could save the painter's life; but he expired
      in his house at Blackfriars on December 9, 1641, at the early
      age of forty-two. Two days afterwards he was buried in the old
      cathedral of St. Paul's, and the king erected a monument to
      record the death of one "who in life had conferred immortality
      on many." A magnificent collection of his works was shown at
      the Royal Academy in the winter exhibition of 1900.

      The characteristics of Van Dyck's art may in large measure be
      gathered from the circumstances of his life. He is essentially
      the painter of princes. His sacred and other subject pictures
      are often remarkable for force and vigour of handling.
      "Van Dyck," says Ruskin, "often gives a graceful dramatic
      rendering of received Scriptural legends." But it is not in
      these subjects that Van Dyck is seen in his most interesting
      and most characteristic manner. "Rubens is only to be seen in
      the Battle of the Amazons, and Van Dyck only at court." No
      more in him than in the other later Flemish artists is there
      anything spiritual. The difference between him and Teniers, for
      instance, is accidental rather than essential. "They lived,"
      says Ruskin, "the gentle at court, the simple in the pot-house;
      and could indeed paint, according to their habitation, a
      nobleman or a boor, but were not only incapable of conceiving,
      but wholly unwishful to conceive, anything, natural or
      supernatural, beyond the precincts of the Presence and the
      tavern." What distinguishes Van Dyck is the indelible mark of
      courtly grace and refinement which he gives to all his sitters.
      Nowhere clearer than in his portraits does one see the better
      side of the "Cavalier" ideal. In this connection we may note
      Van Dyck's feeling for the nobility of the horse (_see_ note
      on No. 156). One thing "that gives nobleness to the Van Dyck,"
      says Ruskin in describing one of his "cavalier" portraits, "is
      its feminineness; the rich, light silken scarf, the flowing
      hair, the delicate, sharp, though sunburnt features, and the
      lace collar, do not in the least diminish the manliness,
      but add feminineness. One sees that the knight is indeed a
      soldier, but not a soldier only; that he is accomplished in all
      ways, and tender in all thoughts." The reader who remembers
      any large collection of Van Dycks will feel that the spirit
      of Ruskin's description is true to a very large number of
      them. One may forget the individual sitter; the impression
      left by the Van Dyck type is indelible. Charles I. and his
      Queen, though painted by several other painters, are known to
      posterity exclusively through Van Dyck--not (says M. Hymans)
      from a greater closeness of resemblance to the original, but
      from a particular power of expression and bearing, which, once
      seen, it is impossible to forget. The same may be said of Van
      Dyck's portraits generally. He endowed all his sitters alike
      with the same distinction of feature and elegance in bearing.
      He excelled in giving delicacy to the hands, and is said to
      have kept special models for this part of his work. He is not
      what is called an "intimate" portrait painter. He does not
      startle us with penetration in seizing points of individual
      character; he charms us with the refinement of his type.
      "In Titian," says Ruskin, "it is always the Man whom we see
      first; in Van Dyck the Prince or the Sir." With regard to Van
      Dyck's technique, his earlier productions (says Sir F. Burton)
      "are scarcely to be distinguished from those of Rubens, and
      there are cases in which dogmatism as to authorship would be
      hazardous.[81] Differentiation is first visible in a greater
      precision, a slenderer, it might be said, a more wiry touch,
      and a cooler colouring, on the part of the pupil." At its
      worst, Van Dyck's touch is distinguished by what Ruskin calls
      a certain "flightiness and flimsiness"; at its best, by great
      refinement: "there is not a touch of Van Dyck's pencil but he
      seems to have revelled in--not grossly, but delicately--tasting
      the colour in every touch as an epicure would wine." His
      output was prodigious; in spite of his early death more than
      1000 works are attributed to him. A considerable portion of
      many of these was done by assistants, and his later works
      are often hasty and careless. The references to Van Dyck in
      Ruskin's books are numerous. (The most interesting are _Modern
      Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. §§ 5, 10, 22; ch. vii. § 23;
      _Elements of Drawing_, appendix ii.; _On the Old Road_, i. §
      154; _Art of England_, 1884, pp. 43, 83, 138, 212.)

A portrait of special interest as having been much prized by Sir Joshua
Reynolds, to whom it formerly belonged. When Mr. Angerstein bought
it, the great Burke is said to have congratulated him on possessing
Sir Joshua's "favourite picture." It is commonly called "The Portrait
of Rubens," but the principal figure does not greatly resemble the
well-known face of Rubens; it is more probably a portrait of Luke
Vostermann, a celebrated engraver of the time. He is discoursing, it
would seem, on some point of art, suggested by the little statue which
a man behind is holding.


50. ST. AMBROSE AND THEODOSIUS.

  _Van Dyck_ (Flemish: 1599-1641). _See under last picture._

A copy, with some variations, of a large picture by Rubens now at
Vienna. The subject is that described by Gibbon (ch. xxvii.). The
Emperor Theodosius, for a massacre of the inhabitants of Thessalonica,
was excommunicated by Ambrose, the Archbishop of Milan.

      The emperor was deeply affected by his own reproaches, and
      by those of his spiritual father; and, after he had bewailed
      the mischievous and irreparable consequences of his own rash
      fury, he proceeded, in the accustomed manner, to perform his
      devotions in the great church of Milan. He was stayed in the
      porch by the Archbishop; who, in the tone and language of an
      ambassador of heaven, declared to his sovereign that private
      contrition was not sufficient to atone for a public fault, or
      to appease the justice of an offended Deity. Theodosius humbly
      represented that if he had contracted the guilt of homicide,
      David, the man after God's own heart, had been guilty not
      only of murder, but of adultery. "You have imitated David in
      his crime, imitate then his repentance," was the reply of the
      undaunted Ambrose.

Observe as an instance of picturesque ornament properly introduced
in subordination to the figure subject, the robes of St. Ambrose.
"Tintoret, Titian, Veronese, Rubens, and Van Dyck would be very sorry
to part with their figured stuffs and lustrous silks; and sorry,
observe, exactly in the degree of their picturesque feeling. Should
not _we_ also be sorry to have Bishop Ambrose without his vest in that
picture of the National Gallery? But I think Van Dyck would not have
liked, on the other hand, the vest without the bishop. And I much doubt
if Titian or Veronese would have enjoyed going into Waterloo House, and
making studies of dresses upon the counters" (_Stones of Venice_, vol.
i. ch. xx. § 13).


51. A JEW MERCHANT.

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

One of the "heads of the people" whom Rembrandt saw around him; for the
street in which he lived at Amsterdam swarmed with Dutch and Portuguese
Jews. "In rendering human character, such as he saw about him,
Rembrandt is nearly equal to Correggio, Titian, Tintoret, Veronese,
or Velazquez; and the real power of him is in his stern and steady
touch on lip and brow,--seen best in his lightest etchings,--or in the
lightest parts of the handling of his portraits, the head of the Jew in
our own Gallery being about as good and thorough work as it is possible
to see of his" (_Academy Notes_, 1859, p. 52).


52. "PORTRAIT OF GEVARTIUS."

  _Van Dyck_ (Flemish: 1599-1641). _See_ 49.

One of the most celebrated pictures in the Gallery. The title by
which it is commonly known is incorrect; the sitter being not Gaspar
Gevarts or Gevartius, but Cornelius van der Geest, an amateur of the
arts and a friend of Rubens and Van Dyck. It is the grave learning of
a scholar, the gentle refinement of an artist--notice especially "the
liquid, living lustre of the eye"--that Van Dyck here puts before us.
In point of execution this picture ranks as one of the finest portraits
in the world. "From it," says Mr. Watts, R.A., "the modern student
will learn more than from any I am acquainted with. The eyes," he
adds, "are miracles of drawing and painting. They are a little tired
and overworked, and do not so much _see_ anything as indicate the
thoughtful brain behind. How wonderful the flexible mouth! with the
light shining through the sparse moustache. How tremulously yet firmly
painted. The ear: how set on ... so throughout there is no part of
this wonderful portrait that might not be examined and enlarged upon;
but I would ask my fellow-students to do this for themselves. Not a
touch is put in for what is understood by 'effect.' Dexterous in a
superlative degree, there is not in the ordinary sense a dexterous dab
doing duty for honourable serious work: nothing done to look well at
one distance or another, but to be right at every distance" (_Magazine
of Art_, June 1889). Sir Edward Poynter is equally enthusiastic. "This
wonderful portrait," he says, "is perhaps the most perfect head ever
painted by this consummate painter. Not only for the brilliancy and
purity of its flesh tints, the masterly drawing, and the vitality of
the expression, does it rank as one of the masterpieces of portraiture
existing; but for the brushwork, of which every touch expresses with
supreme dexterity all the varieties of form, substance, and texture,
it is unsurpassed, perhaps unrivalled, in the history of painting"
(_National Gallery_, i. 152). Another P.R.A., Benjamin West, copied the
"Gevartius," and at this day there is no picture in the Gallery more
often copied by students.[82] Their preference is justified by that
of the painter himself, who "used to consider it his masterpiece, and
before he had gained his great reputation carried it about with him
from court to court, and patron to patron, to show what he could do as
a portrait painter."[83]


53. AN EVENING LANDSCAPE.

  _Albert Cuyp_ (Dutch: 1620-1691).

      Cuyp was born at Dort--the son of an artist who was one of the
      founders of the Painters' Guild in that town. He was a deacon
      and elder of his church, and was a citizen of importance,
      holding various municipal and judicial offices. As a painter,
      however, he had little reputation in his own country, and,
      as is the case with so many of the Dutch masters, it was in
      England that he was first appreciated. Even in 1750 one of
      his pictures sold for thirty florins; in 1876 one fetched
      at Christie's £5040. The high esteem in which his works are
      thus held is justified alike by their own merits and by his
      important position in the history of landscape art. He is, in
      the first place, the principal master of pastoral landscape,
      "representing peasant life and its daily work, or such scenery
      as may naturally be suggestive of it, consisting usually of
      simple landscape, in part subjected to agriculture, with
      figures, cattle, and domestic buildings." In this respect Cuyp
      is an interesting case of the detachment of an artist's life.
      He was born and lived in troublous times; but in looking at his
      works one would imagine (it has been said) "that he passed his
      whole life in Arcadia, untroubled by any more anxious thought
      than whether the sun would give the effect which he required
      for his paintings, or the cows stay long enough for him to
      depict them in their natural attitudes." Dwelling on the banks
      of the placid Maas, he delighted also to reproduce the warm
      skies of summer or autumn reflected in an expanse of water
      overspread with marine craft. Secondly, Cuyp has been called
      the "Dutch Claude," for he was the first amongst the Dutch to
      "set the sun in the sky." "For expression of effects of yellow
      sunlight, parts might be chosen out of the good pictures of
      Cuyp, which have never been equalled in art." It is sun_shine_,
      observe, that Cuyp paints, not sun _colour_. "Observe this
      accurately. Those easily understood effects of afternoon light,
      gracious and sweet so far as they reach, are produced by the
      softly warm or yellow rays of the sun falling through mist.
      They are low in tone, even in nature, and disguise the colours
      of objects. They are imitable even by persons who have little
      or no gift of colour, if the tones of the picture are kept
      low and in true harmony, and the reflected lights warm. But
      they never could be painted by great colourists. The fact of
      blue and crimson being effaced by yellow and grey puts such
      effect at once out of the notice or thought of a colourist."
      The task of painting the sun _colour_ was reserved for Turner;
      yet Cuyp's pictures had a great influence over him." He went
      steadily through the subdued golden chord, and painted Cuyp's
      favourite effect, 'sun rising through vapour,' for many a weary
      year. But this was not enough for him. He must paint the sun in
      his strength, the sun rising _not_ through vapour. If you turn
      to the Apollo in the 'Ulysses and Polyphemus' (508), his horses
      are rising beyond the horizon--you see he is not 'rising
      through vapour,' but above it;--gaining somewhat of a victory
      over vapour, it appears. The old Dutch brewer,[84] with his
      yellow mist, was a great man and a good guide, but he was not
      Apollo. He and his dray-horses led the way through the flats
      cheerily, for a little time; we have other horses now flaming
      out 'beyond the mighty sea'" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt.
      ii. sec. ii. ch. i. § 19; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. xi. §§ 3, 4).
      Admirers of Cuyp should make a point of visiting the Dulwich
      Gallery, which is peculiarly rich in works by this master. In
      the British Museum are several of his drawings and studies.

An interesting study in what is called "truth of tone" may be made with
this picture--by which is meant the "exact relation and fitness of
shadow and light, and of the hues of all objects under them; and more
especially that precious quality of each colour laid on which makes it
appear a quiet colour illuminated, not a bright colour in shade." Now
with regard to this Ruskin says, "I much doubt if there be a single
_bright_ Cuyp in the world, which, taken as a whole, does not present
many glaring solecisms in tone. I have not seen many fine pictures
of his which were not utterly spoiled by the vermilion dress of some
principal figure--a vermilion totally unaffected and unwarmed by the
golden hue of the rest of the picture; and, what is worse, with little
distinction between its own illumined and shaded parts, so that it
appears altogether out of sunshine--the colour of a bright vermilion
in dead, cold daylight.... And these failing parts, though they often
escape the eye when we are near the picture and able to dwell upon what
is beautiful in it, yet so injure its whole effect that I question if
there be many Cuyps in which vivid colours occur, which will not lose
their effect and become cold and flat at a distance of ten or twelve
paces, retaining their influence only when the eye is close enough
to rest on the right parts without including the whole. Take, for
instance, the large one in our National Gallery. (Seen at a distance)
the black cow appears a great deal nearer than the dogs, and the golden
tones of the distance look like a sepia drawing rather than like
sunshine, owing chiefly to the utter want of aerial greys indicated
through them" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. i. §§
11, 19).


54. A WOMAN BATHING.

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

"Those who have been in Holland," says Mrs. Jameson, "must often
have seen the peasant girls washing their linen and trampling on it,
precisely in the manner here depicted. Rembrandt may have seen one
of them from his window, and snatching up his pencil and palette, he
threw the figure on the canvas and fixed it there as by a spell."
More probably, however, this is one of Rembrandt's many pictures of
his servant and model, Hendrickje Stoffels. "The finest of the whole
series," says M. Michel, "is the study of Hendrickje in the National
Gallery, the so-called 'Woman Bathing.' It bears the date 1654, and
is undoubtedly a masterpiece among Rembrandt's less important works.
The young woman, whose only garment is a chemise, stands facing the
spectator, in a deep pool. Her attitude suggests a sensation of
pleasure and refreshment tempered by the involuntary shrinking of the
body at the first contact of the cold water. The light from above
glances on her breast and forehead, and on the luxuriant disorder
of her bright hair; the lower part of her face and her legs are in
deep transparent shadow. The brown tones of the soil, the landscape
background and the water, the purple and gold of the draperies, make up
a marvellous setting alike for the brilliantly illuminated contour and
the more subdued carnations of the model. The truth of the impression,
the breadth of the careful but masterly execution, the variety of
the handling, proclaim the matured power of the artist, and combine
to glorify the hardy grace and youthful radiance of his creation"
(_Rembrandt: his Life, his Work, and his Time_, ii. 70).


55. THE DEATH OF PROCRIS (_see under_ 698).

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

"A most pathetic picture," says Constable (who made a copy of it
when it was in Sir George Beaumont's possession). "The expression of
Cephalus is very touching; and, indeed, nothing can be finer than the
way in which Claude has told that affecting story throughout. Procris
has come from her concealment to die at the feet of her husband.
Above her is a withered tree clasped by ivy, an emblem of love in
death,--while a stag seen on the outline of a hill, over which the
rising sun spreads his rays, explains the cause of a fatal mistake....
It is the fashion to find fault with his figures indiscriminately,
yet in his best time they are so far from being objectionable that we
cannot easily imagine anything else according so well with his scenes;
as objects of colour they seem indispensable. Wilson said to a friend
who was talking of them in the usual manner, 'Do not fall into the
common mistake of objecting to Claude's figures'" (Leslie's _Life of
Constable_, 1845, p. 339).


56. LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES.

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


57. THE CONVERSION OF ST. BAVON.

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

Bavon, a noble of Brabant, in the seventeenth century having determined
to renounce the pomps and vanities of the world (his retinue is to be
seen on the right), is met on the steps of the convent church by the
bishop who is to receive him into his new life. To the left his goods
are being given away to the poor, and above there is a group of ladies
returning thanks for the noble penitent's conversion.


58. A STUDY OF TREES.

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

This picture, when in Sir George Beaumont's collection at Coleorton,
was copied by Constable and called by him "The Little Grove." In 1823
Constable wrote to a friend, "I have likewise begun 'The Little Grove'
by Claude; a noonday scene 'which warms and cheers, but which does
not inflame or irritate.' Through the depths of the trees are seen a
waterfall and a ruined temple, and a solitary shepherd is piping to
some goats and sheep:--

    'In closing shades and where the current strays,
    Pipes the lone shepherd to his feeding flocks.'"

(Leslie's _Life of Constable_, 1845, p. 119.)


59. THE BRAZEN SERPENT.

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

"It is interesting to observe the difference in the treatment of
this subject by the three great masters, Michael Angelo, Rubens,
and Tintoret.... Rubens and Michael Angelo made the fiery serpents
huge boa-constrictors, and knotted the sufferers together with them.
Tintoret makes ... the serpents little flying and fluttering monsters,
like lampreys with wings; and the children of Israel, instead of being
thrown into convulsed and writhing groups, are scattered, fainting in
the fields, far away in the distance. As usual, Tintoret's conception,
while thoroughly characteristic of himself, is also truer to the words
of Scripture. We are told that 'the Lord sent fiery serpents among the
people, and they _bit_ the people'; we are not told that they crushed
the people to death. And, while thus the truest, it is also the most
terrific conception.... Our instinct tells us that boa-constrictors do
not come in armies; and we look upon the picture with as little emotion
as upon the handle of a vase, or any other form worked out of serpents,
when there is no probability of serpents actually occurring" (_Stones
of Venice_: Venetian Index, "Rocco, Scuola di San," No. 24).


61. LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES.

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

The history of this picture is curiously interesting. It belonged to
Sir George Beaumont, who valued it so highly that it was, we are told,
his travelling companion. He presented it to the National Gallery in
1826, but unable to bear its loss begged it back for the rest of his
life. He took it with him into the country, and on his death, two years
later, his widow restored it to the nation. Sir George Beaumont was not
the only artist who thought highly of this little picture. Constable,
we are told, "looked back on the first sight of this exquisite work as
an important epoch in his life.... It is called _The Annunciation_; but
the spring by which the female is seated, and the action of the angel
who points to the buildings in the distance, leave little doubt that
Claude's intention was to represent the first flight of Hagar from the
presence of her mistress" (Leslie's _Life of Constable_, 1845, p. 6).


62. A BACCHANALIAN DANCE.

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

This picture, one of Poussin's masterpieces, is probably one of four
Bacchanals painted for Cardinal Richelieu:--

    Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs! whence came ye,
    So many, and so many, and such glee?
    Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left
        Your nuts in oak-tree cleft?--
    "For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree;
    For wine we left our heath, and yellow brooms,
        And cold mushrooms;
    For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth;
    Great god of breathless cups and chirping mirth!
    Come hither, lady fair, and joined be
        To our mad minstrelsy!"

  KEATS: _Endymion_.


63. LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES.

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

This picture was originally in the Giustiniani Palace at Rome; hence
the figures are supposed to represent (as stated on the frame) Prince
Giustiniani and his attendants returning from the chase.


64. RETURN OF THE ARK FROM CAPTIVITY.

  _Sebastien Bourdon_ (French: 1616-1671).

This picture was a great favourite with Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom
it once belonged. He cited it, together with a picture by Salvator
Rosa, to the students of the Academy (Discourse xiv.) as an instance
of the "poetical style of landscape," calling particular attention to
the "visionary" character of "the whole and every part of the scene."
The subject is the return of the ark by the Philistines to the valley
of Bath-shemesh, as described in I Samuel vi. 10-14. The painter was
one of the original twelve _anciens_ of the old French Academy of
painting, of which he died rector; he had formerly been painter to
Queen Christina of Sweden, to whose country he had fled as a Protestant.


65. CEPHALUS AND AURORA.

  _Nicolas Poussin_ (French: 1593-1669). _See under_ 39.

None of the "learned" Poussin's pictures in the Gallery shows so well
as this how steeped he was alike in the knowledge and in the feeling of
Greek mythology. Cephalus was a Thessalian prince whose love of hunting
carried him away at early dawn from the arms of his wife Procris (see
under 698). Hence the allegorical fable of the loves of Cephalus and
Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, and her attempt to rival Procris in
his affections. Cephalus here half yields to Aurora's blandishments,
but a little Cupid holds up before him the portrait of his wife and
recalls her love to his mind. Behind is Aurora's car, in which she is
drawn by the white-winged Pegasus across the sky. But Pegasus, with
that intermingling of many ideas which is characteristic of all Greek
myths, is also "the Angel of the Wild Fountains: that is to say, the
fastest flying or lower rain-cloud, winged, but racing as upon the
earth."[85] Hence beside him sleeps a river-god, his head resting on
his urn. But the mountain top is tipped with dawn; and behind, one sees
a Naiad waking. Farther still beyond, in a brightening horizon, the
form of Apollo, the sun-god whose advent follows on the dawn, is just
apparent, his horses and his car melting into the shapes of morning
clouds.[86]


66. A LANDSCAPE: AUTUMN MORNING.

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

Rubens "perhaps furnishes us with the first instances of complete,
unconventional, unaffected landscape. His treatment is healthy, manly,
and rational, not very affectionate, yet often condescending to minute
and multitudinous detail; always, as far as it goes, pure, forcible,
and refreshing, consummate in composition, and marvellous in colour"
(_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 15). Notice
especially the sky. "The whole field of ancient landscape art affords,
as far as we remember, but one instance of any effort whatever to
represent the character of the upper cloud region. That one instance
is the landscape of Rubens in our own Gallery, in which the mottled or
fleecy sky is given with perfect truth and exquisite beauty" (_ibid._,
vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. ii. § 9). Rubens's skill in landscape was
partly due to fondness for the scenery he depicted. This picture was
painted when he was at Genoa, but it is a purely Flemish scene--a broad
stretch of his own lowlands, with the castle of Stein, it is said,
which was afterwards his residence, near Mechlin, in the background,
with Flemish waggon and horses fording a brook, and with a sportsman in
the immediate foreground, carrying an old-fashioned firelock, intent on
a covey of partridges.[87] "The Dutch painters are perfectly contented
with their flat fields and pollards; Rubens, though he had seen the
Alps, usually composes his landscapes of a hayfield or two, plenty of
pollards and willows, a distant spire, a Dutch house with a moat about
it, a windmill, and a ditch" (_ibid._, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xiii. §
20). The Dutch painters agreed, in fact, with the Lincolnshire farmer
in Kingsley's _Alton Locke_, whom Ruskin goes on to quote: "None o'
this here darned ups and downs o' hills, to shake a body's victuals out
of his inwards," but "all so vlat as a barn's vloor, for vorty mile on
end--there's the country to live in!"

This picture is one of four "seasons." (Spring is in the Wallace
collection at Hertford House, Summer and Winter are in the Royal
collection at Windsor.) It was presented to the nation by Sir George
Beaumont. The painter Haydon, describing a visit to Sir George at
Coleorton, writes:

"We dined with the Claude and Rembrandt before us, breakfasted with the
Rubens landscape, and did nothing morning, noon, or night but think
of painting, dream of painting, and wake to paint again." The picture
is referred to also by Wordsworth in a very interesting passage.
"I heard the other day," he writes to Sir George Beaumont, "of two
artists, who thus expressed themselves upon the subject of a scene
among our lakes: 'Plague upon those vile enclosures!' said one; 'they
spoil everything.' 'Oh,' said the other, 'I never _see_ them.' Glover
was the name of this last. Now, for my part, I should not wish to be
either of these gentlemen, but to have in my own mind the power of
turning to advantage, wherever it is possible, every object of Art and
Nature as they appear before me. What a noble instance, as you have
pointed out to me, has Rubens given of this in that picture in your
possession, where he has brought, as it were, a whole country into
one landscape, and made the most formal partitions of cultivation,
hedgerows of pollard willows, conduct the eye into the depths and
distances of his picture: and thus, more than by any other means, has
given it that appearance of immensity which is so striking" (_Memorials
of Coleorton_, ii. 135).


67. THE HOLY FAMILY AND ST. GEORGE.

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

On the left are the usual incidents of a "Riposo," or Repose in
Egypt. St. Joseph is asleep, and the mule browses on the bank of the
stream, while John the Baptist and attendant angels play with the
Lamb. The Holy Child is on its mother's knee, and to them St. George
is presenting his proselyte, the heathen princess whom he had saved
from the dragon (see under 16). The dragon, now bridled with her
girdle, follows her meekly, and St. George, as he introduces her to the
mysteries of Christianity, plants the banner of the Faith. With the
holy mother is St. Mary Magdalen--a penitent sinner herself, like the
heathen princess, whom she now ushers into the Holy Presence.

Such appears to be the subject. As for the manner in which it is
treated, it is interesting to know that the figures are portraits of
the painter himself and his family. Rubens "is religious, too, after
his manner; hears mass every morning, and perpetually uses the phrase
'by the grace of God,' or some other such, in writing of any business
he takes in hand; but the tone of his religion may be determined
by one fact. We saw how Veronese painted himself and his family as
worshipping the Madonna. Rubens has also painted himself in an equally
elaborate piece.[88] But they are not _worshipping_ the Madonna. They
are _performing_ the Madonna, and her saintly entourage" (_Modern
Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 9).


68. A WOODY LANDSCAPE.

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

The scene is the beautiful avenue of oaks, called the "Galleria di
Sopra," which skirts the upper margin of the Lake of Albano. Ruskin
refers to this picture in illustration of his thesis that Turner's
"truth of vegetation," in his representation of the exceeding intricacy
of nature, is not to be paralleled among the old painters, and least of
all in Gaspard Poussin with his regular "tree-patterns." The picture
before us is "a woody landscape," which in nature would be a mass of
intricate foliage--

      "a mere confusion of points and lines between you and the
      sky.... This, as it comes down into the body of the tree,
      gets closer, but never opaque; it is always transparent,
      with crumbling lights in it letting you through to the sky;
      then, out of this, come, heavier and heavier, the masses of
      illumined foliage, all dazzling and inextricable, save here
      and there a single leaf on the extremities: then, under these,
      you get deep passages of broken irregular gloom, passing into
      transparent, green-lighted, misty hollows ... all penetrable
      and transparent, and, in proportion, inextricable and
      incomprehensible, except where across the labyrinth and mystery
      of the dazzling light and dream-like shadow, falls, close to
      us, some solitary spray, some wreath of two or three motionless
      large leaves, the type and embodying of all that in the rest we
      feel and imagine, but can never see.

      "Now, with thus much of nature in your mind, go to Gaspard
      Poussin's 'View near Albano.' It is the very subject to unite
      all these effects, a sloping bank shaded with intertwined
      forest. And what has Gaspard given us? A mass of smooth,
      opaque, varnished brown, without one interstice, one change
      of hue, or any vestige of leafy structure, in its interior,
      or in those parts of it, I should say, which are intended to
      represent interior; but out of it, over it rather, at regular
      intervals, we have circular groups of greenish touches,
      always the same in size, shape, and distance from each other,
      containing so exactly the same number of touches each, that
      you cannot tell one from another. There are eight or nine and
      thirty of them, laid over each other like fish-scales; the
      shade being most carefully made darker and darker as it recedes
      from each until it comes to the edge of the next, against
      which it cuts in the same sharp circular line, and then begins
      to decline again, until the canvas is covered with about as
      much intelligence or feeling of art as a house-painter has in
      marbling a wainscot, or a weaver in repeating an ornamental
      pattern. What is there in this, which the most determined
      prejudice in favour of the old masters can for a moment suppose
      to resemble trees? It is exactly what the most ignorant
      beginner, trying to make a complete drawing, would lay down;
      exactly the conception of trees which we have in the works of
      our worst drawing-masters, where the shade is laid on with
      the black lead and stump, and every human power exerted to
      make it look like a kitchen grate well polished"[89] (_Modern
      Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. i. §§ 16-19).

A further "untruth of vegetation" is the perpetration of the bough at
the left-hand upper corner. This is--

      "a representation of an ornamental group of elephants'
      tusks, with feathers tied to the end of them. Not the
      wildest imagination could ever conjure up in it the remotest
      resemblance to the bough of a tree. It might be the claws of
      a witch, the talons of an eagle, the horns of a fiend; but it
      is a full assemblage of every conceivable falsehood which can
      be told respecting foliage, a piece of work so barbarous in
      every way, that one glance at it ought to prove the complete
      charlatanism and trickery of the whole system of the old
      landscape painters" (_ibid._, § 7).


69. ST. JOHN PREACHING IN THE WILDERNESS.

  _Pietro Francesco Mola_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1612-1668).

      Mola, a native of Milan, and the son of an architect, studied
      first at Rome and Venice, but afterwards at Bologna--returning
      ultimately to Rome, where he held the office of President of
      the Academy of St. Luke. "There is," says Sir Frederic Burton,
      "a certain idyllic character in Mola's works which renders
      them extremely attractive and of more artistic value than the
      majority of works produced in his day."

The wild figure of the Baptist is well contrasted with the turbaned
Pharisee and the rest of his audience:--

    The last, and greatest, herald of Heav'n's King,
    Girt with rough skins, hies to the desert wild:
    There burst he forth--"All ye whose hopes rely
    On God! with me amidst these deserts mourn;
    Repent! repent! and from old errors turn."
    Who listen'd to his voice, obey'd his cry?
    Only the echoes, which he made relent,
    Rung from their flinty caves--Repent!--repent!

  DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN: _Flowers of Zion_.

The preacher places his right hand on his heart as if to attest his
own sincerity, while with his left he points to the Saviour, who is
seen approaching in the distance: "This is he of whom I said, After me
cometh a man which is preferred before me, for he was before me."


70. CORNELIA AND HER JEWELS.

  _Padovanino_ (Venetian: 1590-1650).

      Alessandro Varotari was born at Padua, from which town he
      derived the name by which he is generally known. He was the
      son of a Veronese painter, but went early to Venice, where
      he became a student and imitator of the works of Titian and
      Paolo Veronese. His masterpiece is the "Marriage at Cana" in
      the Academy at Venice. He painted children well, and often
      introduced them into his pictures.

Cornelia, a noble Roman lady, daughter of the elder Scipio Africanus,
and mother of the Gracchi, was visited by a friend, who ostentatiously
exhibited her jewels. Cornelia being asked to show hers in turn,
pointed to her two sons, just then returning from school, and said,
"These are my jewels."


71. A PARTY OF MULETEERS.

  _Jan Both_ (Dutch: 1610-1662).

      Jan Both, born at Utrecht, was one of the first "Italianisers"
      in landscape. He was the son of a glass painter, who gave him
      his first lessons in drawing; he afterwards became the pupil
      of Abraham Bloemaert. As soon as he was old enough to travel,
      he set out with his brother Andries for Italy. Unlike Rubens,
      who even at Genoa painted only the Netherlands, Both adopted
      Italian scenery as his subject. At Rome he formed his style on
      that of Claude. The two brothers travelled, studied, and worked
      in Italy together. Jan excelled in landscape; the figures and
      cattle in his pictures were generally sketched by Andries.
      After some years at Rome, the brothers worked for a time at
      Venice; here Andries, having dined one evening not wisely but
      too well, fell from his gondola into the water and was drowned.
      This was a terrible blow to Jan, who returned to Utrecht in
      despair, where he survived his brother for some years, during
      which Poelenburgh took the place of Andries (see No. 209). In
      the year 1649 Jan was one of the chiefs of the Painters' Guild
      at Utrecht, and the inscription on an engraved portrait of him
      published in 1662 speaks of him as a "good and well-respected
      landscape painter." Both loved to paint abruptly-rising rocks,
      with mountain paths fringed with trees, and cascades or lakes
      in the foreground. His best works are distinguished by the soft
      golden tones of the declining day. Several good examples of
      this master are to be seen at the Dulwich Gallery.

A reminiscence, doubtless, of one of Both's journeys in the Italian
lake district. One may recall the reminiscence of Italy by another
northern traveller--

    Know'st thou the mountain bridge that hangs on cloud?
    The mules in mist grope o'er the torrent loud,
    In caves lie coil'd the dragon's ancient brood,
    The crag leaps down and over it the flood:
    Know'st thou it, then?
                        'Tis there! 'tis there
    Our way runs; O my father, wilt thou go?

  MIGNON'S song in _Wilhelm Meister_: Carlyle's translation.


72. LANDSCAPE WITH TOBIAS AND THE ANGEL.

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


73. THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL.

  _Ascribed to Ercole di Giulio Grandi_ (Ferrarese: died 1531).

The confused character of this picture is sufficiently shown by the
fact that whilst the official designation is as above, other critics
have called it the "Destruction of Sennacherib." For a masterpiece
by Ercole, see 1119. The ascription to him of this inferior work is
decidedly doubtful.


74. A SPANISH PEASANT BOY.

  _Murillo_ (Spanish: 1618-1682). _See_ 13.

Look at this and the other little boy near it (176), and you will see
at once the secret of Murillo's popularity. "In a country like Spain
he became easily the favourite of the crowd. He was one of themselves,
and had all the gifts they valued. Not like Velazquez, reproducing by
choice only the noble and dignified side of the national character,
Murillo could paint to perfection either the precocious sentiment of
the Good Shepherd with the lamb by his side, or the rags and happiness
of the gipsy beggar boy" (W. B. Scott's _Murillo_, p. 76)--

    Poor and content is rich and rich enough.


75. ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON.

  _Domenichino_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1581-1641). _See_ 48.

Compare this conventional representation of the subject with the
imaginative one by Tintoretto (16). Amongst points of comparison notice
the absence of anything terrible in the dragon, the crowd of spectators
(on the walls in the distance), St. George's helmet; and where is his
spear?


76. CHRIST'S AGONY IN THE GARDEN.

  _After Correggio_. _See under_ 10.

This is an old copy, or perhaps a replica, of the original picture
in the possession of the Duke of Wellington at Apsley House. The
treatment of the subject is remarkable, and characteristic of
Correggio. "The angel hovers in mid-air with marvellous ease and
lightness, and though he bears the healing message of approaching
bliss, he cannot restrain his sense of pity. His face is at once
radiant and sorrowful, expressing the mingled feelings with which he
points on the one hand to heaven, on the other to the cross and crown
of thorns. Christ, effulgent in his long straight robe and shining
aureole, gazes upward with mournful resignation, the spasm of agony
dying out of his face. The twilight landscape is calm and melancholy.
The supernatural radiance sheds but a faint light on the grass and
bushes, scarcely touching the figures of the sleeping disciples, and
dying out completely in the dense foliage beyond. But in the distance
a band of soldiers, scarcely visible by the faint glimmer of their
torches, draws near, led by Judas, and over the mountains the sky
whitens with the first pale streak of dawn" (Ricci: _Correggio: his
Life, his Friends, and his Time_, p. 231). The effect of light,
Mengs points out, is peculiar: "the radiance of the Saviour's face
lights up the picture. But this radiance comes from above, as if from
Heaven, while the angel is illuminated by the light reflected from
the Saviour." It is interesting to compare Correggio's version of the
agony with the earlier one by Bellini (726) and Mantegna (1417). The
earlier pictures impress us, but the manner of impression is quite
different. There is no attempt either in the Bellini or in the Mantegna
to win our sympathy by the beauty of the human type. This, on the other
hand, is of the essence of Correggio's art. "The figure of Christ and
the Angel represent the dignity of perfect humanity; and Correggio
makes the pathos of the expiatory sacrifice of Calvary turn upon this
consideration. This is the strictly Renaissance point of view" (J. E.
Hodgson, R.A., in _Magazine of Art_, 1886, p. 215).

The original picture has a legend attached to it. "Correggio," says
Lomazzo, "was accustomed always to value his works at a very low price,
and having on one occasion to pay a bill of four or five _scudi_ to an
apothecary in his native city, he painted him 'Christ Praying in the
Garden,' which he executed with all possible care." The picture was
sold shortly afterwards for 500 _scudi_. It was subsequently in the
royal collection at Madrid, and after the battle of Vittoria it was
found in Joseph Bonaparte's carriage by one of Wellington's colonels.
Wellington hastened to restore it to Ferdinand VII., who, not to be
outdone in courtesy, presented it to the duke. The picture in our
Gallery was part of the Angerstein collection.


77. THE STONING OF ST. STEPHEN.

  _Domenichino_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1581-1641). _See_ 48.


78.[90] LANDSCAPE WITH RUINS.

  _Nicolas Berchem_ (Dutch: 1620-1683).

      Nicolas Pietersz, son of Pieter Claesz, a painter, called
      himself Berchem, by which name he is entered in the town
      records of Haarlem, and by which he signed his pictures. He
      married the daughter of his master, Jan Wils (No. 1007). In
      1642 he became a member of the Guild of St. Luke at Haarlem.
      No authentic information exists about his visiting Italy,
      but that he had travelled in that country is clear from the
      views represented in his pictures, and from the character
      of his landscapes generally. His style resembles that of
      another Dutch "Italianiser," Jan Both (No. 71), and there
      seems to have been some rivalry between the two men. It is
      related that a burgomaster of Dordrecht, Van der Hulk by
      name, commissioned a picture from each painter, promising an
      additional premium to the one whose work should be thought
      the better. On the completion Of the pictures, the patron
      declared that the admirable works had deprived him of the
      capability of preference, and that both were entitled to the
      premium. The picture painted on this occasion by Berchem is the
      "Halt of Huntsmen," now in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg.
      Berchem's landscapes are taken, says Dr. Richter, "from the
      mountainous countries of Italy, and the types and costumes of
      the figures therein represented are also entirely Italian,
      though not copied direct from nature. He probably painted
      most of his Italian landscapes in Holland. What characterises
      him principally is a brilliant and easy touch, with which
      he renders nature with more art than exactitude. He is more
      ingenious in his conceptions than profound or true." The
      mannerism and monotony of his works accord with what is told
      of his life. In 1665, when at the height of his reputation, he
      sold his labour to a dealer, from early in the morning to four
      in the afternoon, for ten florins a day. His wife, it appears,
      kept the purse, and is said to have doled out very scanty
      supplies--a precaution which was perhaps necessary, as Berchem
      had a weakness for Italian drawings, his collection of which
      sold at his death for 12,800 florins.


81. THE VISION OF ST. AUGUSTINE.

  _Garofalo_ (Ferrarese: 1481-1559).

      Benvenuto Tisio, called Garofalo[91] from the village of
      that name on the Po to which his family belonged, was (like
      Sodoma) the son of a shoemaker, and having shown a strong taste
      for art, was apprenticed as a lad to the Ferrarese painter,
      Domenico Panetti. Seven years later he went to Cremona and
      attached himself to Boccaccino (806). He left Cremona suddenly,
      as described in a letter, still extant, from Boccaccino to
      Garofalo's father: "Had your son," he writes, "learnt good
      manners as thoroughly as he has learnt painting, he would
      scarcely have played me such a shabby trick. He has taken
      himself off, I know not whither, and without a word. But this
      may be a clue to his whereabouts, that he said, if he is to be
      believed, that he would see Rome." From Rome he returned to
      Ferrara, where he formed a warm friendship with the brothers
      Dossi. In 1509 he was again in Rome, where he saw and admired
      Michael Angelo's frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel in all the
      splendour of their freshness. He also greatly admired the work
      of Raphael; "and displayed," says Vasari, "so much diffidence
      as well as courtesy that he became the friend of Raphael, who,
      kind and obliging as he was, assisted and favoured Benvenuto
      much, teaching him many things." In 1511 Benvenuto was at
      Mantua, but in the following year he returned to Ferrara,
      which remained his home for the rest of his life. There, says
      Vasari, who was entertained by him, he lived a particularly
      happy and busy life, being "cheerful of disposition, mild in
      his converse, warmly attached to his friends, beyond measure
      affectionate and devoted, and always supporting the trials of
      his life with patient resignation." These trials were very
      heavy, for soon after he was forty he lost the sight of one
      eye; "nor was he without fear and much danger of losing the
      other. He then recommended himself to God, and made a vow to
      wear grey clothing ever after, as, in fact, he did, when by
      the grace of God the sight of the left eye was preserved to
      him so perfectly that the works executed by Garofalo in his
      sixty-fifth year are so well done, so delicately finished,
      and evince so much care, that they are truly wonderful." For
      the last nine years of his life he was totally blind, in
      which affliction he solaced himself by cultivating music.
      Garofalo's works are very numerous; many of them are in France
      and in Rome, and in our own Gallery he is well represented.
      "He was conscientious and truthful within his scope, and the
      ease and delicacy with which he carried out his smaller works
      could hardly be exceeded." He was an eclectic rather than an
      original painter, though he remained Ferrarese throughout in
      his system of colouring. "His fellow-countrymen have called
      him the 'Ferrarese Raphael,' in the same way that the Milanese
      have called Luini the 'Lombard Raphael,' and, if properly
      understood, both appellations have their meaning; for these
      painters occupy much the same position in their respective
      schools as did Raphael in the Umbrian, Andrea del Sarto in the
      Florentine, etc., though the individual gifts of each were of
      course very different." (Morelli's _Borghese and Doria-Pamfili
      Galleries_, pp. 200-214, contains a detailed account of
      Garofalo. His theory that the works attributed to Ortolano
      are in reality early works of Garofalo is very doubtful. See
      on this point under 699, and _cf._ Venturi's criticism in the
      Catalogue of the Ferrarese Exhibition at the Burlington Fine
      Arts Club).

A well-known incident in the life of St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in
Africa (A.D. 354-430), one of the "doctors" of the Christian Church
whose writings have had a greater effect than those probably of any
one man on the beliefs and lives of succeeding Christian ages. Whilst
busied, he tells us, in writing his discourse on the Trinity, he one
day beheld a child, who, having dug a hole in the sand, was bringing
water, as children at the seaside do, to empty the sea into his hole.
Augustine told him it was impossible. "Not more impossible," replied
the child, "than for thee, O Augustine! to explain the mystery on
which thou art now meditating" ("Canst thou by searching find out God?
canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as
heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The
measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea,"
Job xi. 7-9). The painter shows the visionary nature of the scene by
placing beside St Augustine the figure of St. Catherine, the patron
saint of theologians and scholars, and in the background, on a little
jutting cape, St. Stephen, whose life and actions are set forth in St.
Augustine's writings. The saint himself receives the child's lesson
with the contemptuous impatience of a scholar's ambition; but all the
time the heavens whose mysteries he would fain explore are open behind
him, and the angel choirs are singing that he who would enter in must
first become as a little child, "for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."


82. THE HOLY FAMILY.

  _Mazzolino_ (Ferrarese: 1480-1528). _See_ 169.

For better examples of this painter, _see_ Nos. 169 and 641.


84. MERCURY AND THE WOODMAN.

  _Salvator Rosa_ (Neapolitan: 1615-1673).

      "What is most to be admired in the works of Salvator Rosa,"
      says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "is the perfect correspondence
      which he observed between the subjects which he chose and his
      manner of treating them. Everything is of a piece: his rocks,
      trees, sky, even to his handling, have the same wild and rude
      character which animates his figures." There is perhaps no
      painter whose life is more accurately reflected in his work
      than Salvator. Conspicuous in this picture are a withered tree
      on the right and a withered tree on the left: they are typical
      of the painter's blasted life, and "indignant, desolate,
      and degraded art." He was born near Naples, the son of an
      architect and land-surveyor. In early youth he forsook his
      father's business and began secretly to learn painting. At
      seventeen his father died, and Salvator, being one of a large
      and poor family, was thrown on his own resources. He "cast
      himself carelessly on the current of life. No rectitude of
      ledger-lines stood in his way; no tender precision of household
      customs; no calm successions of rural labour. But past his
      half-starved lips rolled profusion of pitiless wealth; before
      him glared and swept the troops of shameless pleasure. Above
      him muttered Vesuvius; beneath his feet shook the Solfatara. In
      heart disdainful, in temper adventurous; conscious of power,
      impatient of labour, and yet more of the pride of the patrons
      of his youth, he fled to the Calabrian hills, seeking, not
      knowledge, but freedom. If he was to be surrounded by cruelty
      and deceit, let them at least be those of brave men or savage
      beasts, not of the timorous and the contemptible. Better the
      wrath of the robber than enmity of the priest; and the cunning
      of the wolf than of the hypocrite." It was in this frame of
      mind that he sought the solitudes of the hills: "How I hate
      the sight of every spot that is inhabited," he says in one of
      his letters. It was thus that he formed the taste for the wild
      nature which distinguishes his landscapes. It is said indeed
      that he once herded for a time with a band of brigands in the
      Abruzzi. "Yet even among such scenes as these Salvator might
      have been calmed and exalted had he been, indeed, capable of
      exaltation. But he was not of high temper enough to perceive
      beauty. He had not the sacred sense--the sense of colour; all
      the loveliest hues of the Calabrian air were invisible to him;
      the sorrowful desolation of the Calabrian villages unfelt. He
      saw only what was gross and terrible,--the jagged peak, the
      splintered tree, the flowerless bank of grass, and wandering
      weed, prickly and pale. His temper confirmed itself in evil,
      and became more and more fierce and morose; though not, I
      believe, cruel, ungenerous, or lascivious. I should not suspect
      Salvator of wantonly inflicting pain. His constantly painting
      it does not prove he delighted in it; he felt the horror of it,
      and in that horror, fascination. Also, he desired fame, and saw
      that here was an untried field rich enough in morbid excitement
      to catch the humour of his indolent patrons. But the gloom
      gained upon him, and grasped him. He could jest, indeed, as men
      jest in prison-yards (he became afterwards a renowned mimic in
      Florence); his satires are full of good mocking, but his own
      doom to sadness is never repealed." It is characteristic of
      the man that the picture on the reputation of which he went
      up from Naples to Rome was "Tityus torn by the Vulture." At
      Rome, besides his fame as a painter, he made his mark as a
      musician, poet, and improvisatore. He cut a brave figure in
      the Carnival, and his satires were bold and biting. Partly on
      this account he afterwards found it well to leave Rome for
      Florence, where he formed one of the company of "I Percossi"
      (the stricken)--of jovial wits and artists--who enjoyed the
      hospitalities of Cardinal Carlo Giovanni de' Medici. But in
      spite of his merry-making he knew (as he says in a cantata)
      "no truce from care, no pause from woe." He ultimately died
      of the dropsy, having shortly before his death married the
      Florentine Lucrezia, who had borne him two sons. "Of all men
      whose work I have ever studied," says Mr. Ruskin, in summing
      up his career as typical of the lives which cannot conquer
      evil but remain at war with, or in captivity to it, "he gives
      me most distinctly the idea of a lost spirit. Michelet calls
      him, 'Ce damné Salvator,' perhaps in a sense merely harsh and
      violent; the epithet to me seems true in a more literal, more
      merciful sense,--'That condemned Salvator.' I see in him,
      notwithstanding all his baseness, the last traces of spiritual
      life in the art of Europe.... All succeeding men ... were men
      of the world; they are never in earnest and they are never
      appalled. But Salvator was capable of pensiveness, of faith,
      and of fear. The misery of the earth is a marvel to him; he
      cannot leave off gazing at it. The religion of the earth is a
      horror to him. He gnashes his teeth at it, rages at it, mocks
      and gibes at it. He would have acknowledged religion had he
      seen any that was true.... Helpless Salvator! A little early
      sympathy, a word of true guidance, perhaps, had saved him.
      What says he of himself? 'Despiser of wealth and of death.'
      Two grand scorns: but, oh, condemned Salvator! the question
      is not for man what he can scorn, but what he can love." At
      the "opposite poles of art are Fra Angelico and Salvator Rosa;
      of whom the one was a man who smiled seldom, wept often,
      prayed constantly, and never harboured an impure thought. His
      pictures are simply so many pieces of jewellery, the colour of
      the draperies being perfectly pure, as various as those of a
      painted window, chastened only by paleness, and relieved upon
      a gold ground. Salvator was a dissipated jester and satirist,
      a man who spent his life in masquing and revelry. But his
      pictures are full of horror, and their colour is for the most
      part gloomy grey. Truly it would seem as if art had so much
      eternity in it that it must take its dye from the close rather
      than the course of life; 'in such laughter the heart of man is
      sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness'" (_Modern
      Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iv. See also vol. i. pt. i. sec.
      ii. ch. ii. § 9; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 21; vol. v. pt.
      ix. ch. viii. § 14. _Stones of Venice_, vol. ii. ch. v. § 31.
      For a full record of fact and romance about this painter, see
      Lady Morgan's interesting _Life and Times of Salvator Rosa_;
      London, 1855).

An illustration of Æsop's fable of the dishonest woodman who, hearing
of the reward which an honest fellow-labourer had obtained from Mercury
for not claiming either the gold or silver axe which the god first
offered, threw his axe also into the water, hoping for like good
fortune. Mercury--here seen standing in the stream--showed him a golden
axe. He claimed it, and the god having rebuked him for his impudence,
left him to lose his axe and repent of his folly. The painting of the
picture is conspicuous for that want of sense for colour, noted above
as fatally characteristic of Salvator:--

      There is on the left-hand side something without doubt intended
      for a rocky mountain, in the middle distance, near enough
      for all its fissures and crags to be distinctly visible, or,
      rather, for a great many awkward scratches of the brush over it
      to be visible, which, though not particularly representative
      either of one thing or another, are without doubt intended to
      be symbolical of rocks. Now no mountain in full light, and near
      enough for its details of crags to be seen, is without great
      variety of delicate colour. Salvator has painted it throughout
      without one instant of variation; but this, I suppose, is
      simplicity and generalisation;--let it pass: but what is the
      colour? _Pure sky blue_, without one grain of grey, or any
      modifying hue whatsoever; the same brush which had just given
      the bluest parts of the sky has been more loaded at the same
      part of the pallet, and the whole mountain thrown in with
      unmitigated ultramarine. Now, mountains can only become pure
      blue when there is so much air between them that they become
      mere flat dark shades, every detail being totally lost:
      they become blue when they become air, and not till then.
      Consequently this part of Salvator's painting, being of hills
      perfectly clear and near, with all their details visible, is,
      as far as colour is concerned, broad, bold falsehood, the
      direct assertion of direct impossibility.

In connection with Salvator's want of sense for colour one should
take his insensitiveness to other beauty. For instance, his choice
of withered trees, which are here on both sides of us, "is precisely
the sign of his preferring ugliness to beauty, decrepitude and
disorganisation to life and youth" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii.
sec. ii. ch. ii. § 4; vol. v. pt. vi. ch. viii. § 7).


85. ST. JEROME AND THE ANGEL.

  _Domenichino_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1581-1641). _See_ 48.

For St. Jerome, see under 227. The apparition of the angel implies the
special call of St. Jerome to the work of translating the Scriptures.


88. ERMINIA AND THE SHEPHERDS.

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

A scene from the "Jerusalem Delivered" by Carracci's contemporary,
Tasso. Erminia from the beleaguered city of Jerusalem had beheld
the Christian knight, Tancred, whom she loved, wounded in conflict.
Disguised in the armour of her friend Clorinda, wearing a dark blue
cuirass with a white mantle over it, she stole forth at night to tend
him. The sentinels espy her and give her chase. But she outstrips them
all, and after a three days' flight finds herself amongst a shepherd
family, who entertain her kindly. The old shepherd is busily making
card-baskets, and listening to the music of his children. Their fear
gives place to delight as the strange warrior, having dismounted from
her horse and thrown off her helmet and shield, unbinds her tresses and
discloses herself a woman--

              An old man, on a rising ground,
        In the fresh shade, his white flocks feeding near,
        Twig baskets wove; and listen'd to the sound
    Trill'd by three blooming boys, who sat disporting round.
              These, at the shining of her silver arms,
        Were seized at once with wonder and despair;
        But sweet Erminia sooth'd their vain alarms,
        Discovering her dove's eyes and golden hair.
        "Follow," she said, "dear innocents, the care
        Of heaven, your fanciful employ;
        For the so formidable arms I bear,
        No cruel warfare bring, nor harsh annoy
    To your engaging tasks, to your sweet songs of joy."

  From Landseer's _Catalogue_, p. 214.

This picture has sometimes been ascribed to Domenichino; as the latter
was occasionally employed by Annibale to execute his designs, both
masters may have had a share in the work.


91. VENUS SLEEPING.

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


93. SILENUS GATHERING GRAPES.

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

Silenus in a leopard skin, the nurse and preceptor of Bacchus, the
wine-god, is being hoisted by two attendant fauns, so that with his
own hands he may pick the grapes. This and the companion picture, 94,
originally decorated a harpsichord.


94. BACCHUS PLAYING TO SILENUS.[92]

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

A clever picture of contrasts. The old preceptor is leering and
pampered, yet with something of a schoolmaster's gravity, "half
inclining to the brute, half conscious of the god." The young
pupil--like the shepherd boy in Sidney's _Arcadia_, "piping as though
he should never be old"--is "full of simple careless grace, laughing in
youth and beauty; he holds the Pan's pipe in both hands, and looks up
with timid wonder, with an expression of mingled delight and surprise
at the sounds he produces" (Hazlitt: _Criticisms upon Art_, p. 6).

These two pictures--together with the "Lot" and "Susannah" of Guido
(193 and 196)--used to hang in the Lancellotti Palace in Rome. Lanzi
describes our picture, No. 94, as one of the principal treasures of
that collection. It is exquisitely finished, he says; the figures are
"at once designed, coloured, and disposed with the hand of a great
master" (Bohn's translation, iii. 79).


95. DIDO AND ÆNEAS.

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

Dido, Queen of Carthage, enamoured of the Trojan Æneas, the destined
founder of Rome, sought to detain him by strategy within her dominions.
The goddess Juno, who had espoused Dido's cause, contrived that a storm
should befall when the Queen and her guests were on a hunting party
(_Æneid_, iv. 119). In front of the cave a Cupid holds the horse of
Æneas, and two others are fluttering above. High in the clouds is Juno,
accompanied by Venus, who had contrived all this for Dido's undoing.

As for the execution of the picture, "the stormy wind blows loudly
through its leaves, but the total want of invention in the cloud-forms
bears it down beyond redemption. Look at the wreaths of _cloud_ (?),
with their unpleasant edges cut as hard and solid and opaque and smooth
as thick black paint can make them, rolled up over one another like a
dirty sail badly reefed"[93] (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec.
iii. ch. iv. § 23; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 18).


97. THE RAPE OF EUROPA.

  _Paolo Veronese_ (Veronese: 1528-1588). _See_ 26 & p. xix.

(A study for a larger picture now at Vienna.) Jupiter, enamoured of
Europa, a Phoenician princess, transformed himself into a white bull,
and mingled with her father's herds whilst she was gathering flowers
with her attendants. Europa, struck by the beauty and gentle nature
of the beast, caressed him, and even mounted on his back. Two of her
attendants are here assisting her, while a third remonstrates with her
on her foolhardiness. Europa is replying that she has no fears. The
amorous bull meanwhile is licking her foot. He is garlanded with a
wreath of flowers, which is held by his master Cupid, forming thus the
leading-string of Love. With the other hand Cupid has "taken the bull
by the horn"; whilst above, two little winged loves are gathering fruit
and scattering roses. In the middle distance Europa and the bull appear
again, about to enter the sea; whilst farther on, the bull is swimming
with her toward the land. For the story goes that as soon as Europa
had seated herself on his back Jupiter crossed the sea and carried her
safely to the island of Crete, and from this rape of Europa comes the
name of the continent to which she was carried.


98. VIEW OF LA RICCIA.

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

This picture and the scene of it--the ancient town of Aricia, about
fifteen miles from Rome, famous in Roman legend, and Horace's first
stopping-place on his journey to Brindisi--are described by Ruskin in
a celebrated passage of _Modern Painters_:--

      "Whether it can be supposed to resemble the ancient Aricia,
      now La Riccia, close to Albano, I will not take upon me to
      determine, seeing that most of the towns of those old masters
      are quite as much like one place as another; but, at any rate,
      it is a town on a hill, wooded with two-and-thirty bushes,
      of very uniform size, and possessing about the same number
      of leaves each. These bushes are all painted in with one
      dull opaque brown, becoming very slightly greenish towards
      the lights, and discover in one place a bit of rock, which
      of course would in nature have been cool and grey beside the
      lustrous hues of foliage, and which, therefore, being moreover
      completely in shade, is consistently and scientifically painted
      of a very clear, pretty, and positive brick red, the only thing
      like colour in the picture. The foreground is a piece of road
      which, in order to make allowance for its greater nearness, for
      its being completely in light, and, it may be presumed, for the
      quantity of vegetation usually present on carriage-roads, is
      given in a very cool green grey; and the truth of the picture
      is completed by a number of dots in the sky on the right, with
      a stalk to them, of a sober and similar brown.[94]

      "Not long ago, I was slowly descending this very bit of
      carriage road.... The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky
      slopes of La Riccia, and their masses of entangled and tall
      foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure
      of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain.
      I cannot call it colour: it was conflagration. Purple and
      crimson and scarlet, like the curtains of God's tabernacle,
      the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light,
      every separate leaf quivering with buoyant and burning life;
      each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first
      a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses of the
      valley, the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty
      waves of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed
      along their flanks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray
      tossed into the air around them, breaking over the grey walls
      of rock into a thousand separate stars, fading and kindling
      alternately as the weak wind lifted and let them fall. Every
      glade of grass burned like the golden floor of heaven, opening
      in sudden gleams as the foliage broke and closed above it, as
      sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the motionless
      masses of dark rock--dark though flushed with scarlet lichen,
      casting their quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the
      fountain underneath them filling its marble hollow with blue
      mist and fitful sound; and over all, the multitudinous bars
      of amber and rose, the sacred clouds that have no darkness,
      and only exist to illumine, were seen in fathomless intervals
      between the solemn and orbed repose of the stone pines, passing
      to lose themselves in the last, white, blinding lustre of the
      measureless line where the Campagna melted into the sea. Tell
      me who is likest this, Poussin or Turner?" (vol. i. pt. ii.
      sec. ii. ch. ii. §§ 1-3).

Ruskin further instances the picture as an example of "untruth of
trees." It is an elementary law of tree structure that stems only taper
when sending off foliage and sprays:--

      "Therefore we see at once that the stem of Gaspard Poussin's
      tall tree, on the right of the 'La Riccia,' is the painting
      of a carrot or a parsnip, not of the trunk of a tree" (see
      further, _ibid._, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. vi. ch. i. § 6; and
      _cf._ vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 18).


101, 102, 103, 104. THE FOUR AGES OF MAN.

  _Nicolas Lancret_ (French: 1690-1743).

      Lancret, a painter of the "fêtes galantes" school, was an
      imitator of Watteau, but his productions lack the airy grace
      and touch of poetry which elevate even the most frivolous
      pictures of that "prince of court painters" into works of
      fine art. Examples of Watteau are now included among the
      National treasures in the Wallace collection at Hertford House.
      Lancret was the son of humble parents, and received his early
      training as an engraver. Entering subsequently the studio of
      Claude Gillot he came under the influence of Watteau, but his
      friendship with that painter was short-lived. A rivalry appears
      to have sprung up between them, and they remained estranged
      until the closing year of Watteau's life. "Lancret was a
      thorough _bourgeois_, and passed his time chiefly in Paris.
      He was a regular frequenter of the opera and the 'Comique,'
      and was a friend of the dancers La Camargo and La Sallé, whom
      he frequently represented in his works" (Bryan's _Dictionary
      of Painters_). In 1719 he was admitted into the Academy,
      and in 1735 was elected Councillor. In 1840 he married a
      grand-daughter of the comic poet Boursault.

These pictures, which are among the principal works of Lancret, are
interesting historical records as showing the ideal of life at the
French Court in the time of the regent Orleans and Louis XV. In
"Infancy" (101) children, in the gayest clothes and garlanded with
flowers, are at play under a stately portico--life being not so much
a stage as a game, and all the men and women (in that sense) "merely
players." To what should children, thus educated, grow up but to the
pomps and vanity of life, as shown in "Youth" (102)? The adornment of
the person is the chief occupation, it would seem, of the dwellers in
"the Armida Palace, where the inmates live enchanted lives, lapped in
soft music of adulation, waited on by the splendours of the world."
And "Manhood" (103) is like unto youth. The business of life is
pleasure on the greensward, with shooting at the popinjay! "Old Age"
(104) has no place in such a philosophy of life. One old man is indeed
attempting a last amour. The other caresses a dog, while the old women
sleep or spin. But in "Old Age" the painter changes his scene from the
court to common life; the thought of old age is banished, it seems,
from the high life of princes. "In short," wrote an English observer at
the time when this picture was painted, "all the symptoms which I have
ever met with in History, previous to all Changes and Revolutions in
government, now exist and daily increase in France" (Lord Chesterfield:
see Carlyle's _French Revolution_, bk. i. ch. ii.).


125. IZAAK WALTON (1593-1683).

  _Jacob Huysman_ (Dutch: 1656-1696).

      Huysman was one of the many foreign artists who settled in
      England under the Stuarts. He obtained considerable employment
      as a portrait painter, in spite of Sir Peter Lely's rivalry;
      one of the portraits among the "Windsor Beauties," now at
      Hampton Court, was painted by him.

A portrait of the retired city hosier who became famous as the author
of the _Complete Angler_. It was painted for his family (with whom
it remained till it was presented to the National Gallery in 1838),
and was engraved in one of the later editions of the book (1836).
Izaak Walton--"that quaint, old, cruel coxcomb" (as Byron, who was no
fisherman, called him)--lived to be ninety: his fishing did something,
one may expect, to keep him in the vigorous health which is here
stamped on his face. "The features of the countenance often enable us,"
says Zouch in the _Memoirs of Izaak Walton_ (cited in M. E. Wotton's
_Word Portraits of Famous Writers_, p. 323), "to form a judgment, not
very fallible, of the disposition of the mind. In few portraits can
this discovery be more successfully pursued than in that of Izaak
Walton. Lavater, the acute master of physiognomy, would, I think,
instantly acknowledge in it the decisive traits of the original,--mild
complacency, forbearance, mature consideration, calm activity, peace,
sound understanding, power of thought, discerning attention, and
secretly active friendship. Happy in his unblemished integrity, happy
in the approbation and esteem of others, he enwraps himself in his own
virtue. The exaltation of a good conscience eminently shines forth in
this venerable person."


127. VENICE: THE SCUOLA DELLA CARITÀ.

  _Canaletto_ (Venetian: 1697-1768).

      Antonio Canale, commonly called Canaletto,[95] was born in
      Venice, lived in Venice, and painted Venice. His pictures (of
      which the one before us is among the best) are in some respects
      very like the place, but most of those who love it best soon
      find much that is wanting in Canaletto's representations. "The
      effect of a fine Canaletto," says Ruskin, "is, in its first
      impression, dioramic. We fancy we are in our beloved Venice
      again, with one foot, by mistake, in the clear, invisible film
      of water lapping over the marble steps of the foreground. Every
      house has its proper relief against the sky; every brick and
      stone its proper hue of sunlight and shade; and every degree
      of distance its proper tone of relieving air. Presently,
      however, we begin to feel that it is hard and gloomy, and that
      the painter, compelled by the lowness of the utmost light at
      his disposal to deepen the shadows, in order to get the right
      relation, has lost the flashing, dazzling, exulting light
      which was one of our chief sources of Venetian happiness.
      But we pardon this, knowing it to be unavoidable, and begin
      to look for something of that in which Venice differs from
      Rotterdam, or any other city built beside canals. We know that
      house, certainly; we never passed it without stopping our
      gondola, for its arabesques were as rich as a bank of flowers
      in spring, and as beautiful as a dream. What has Canaletto
      given us for them? Four black dots. Well; take the next house.
      We remember that too; it was mouldering inch by inch into
      the canal, and the bricks had fallen away from its shattered
      marble shafts, and left them white, skeleton-like; yet, with
      their fretwork of cold flowers wreathed about them still,
      untouched by time, and through the rents of the wall behind
      them there used to come long sunbeams, greened by the weeds
      through which they pierced, which flitted and fell, one by
      one, round those grey and quiet shafts, catching here a leaf
      and there a leaf, and gliding over the illumined edges and
      delicate fissures, until they sank into the deep dark hollow
      between the marble blocks of the sunk foundation, lighting
      every other moment one isolated emerald lamp on the crest of
      the intermittent waves, when the wild sea-weeds and crimson
      lichens drifted and crawled with their thousand colours
      and free branches over its decay, and the black, clogging,
      accumulated limpets hung in ropy clusters from the dripping
      and tinkling stone. What has Canaletto given us for this? One
      square red mass, composed of--let me count--five-and-fifty,
      no; six-and-fifty, no; I was right at first, five-and-fifty
      bricks, of precisely the same size, shape, and colour, one
      great black line for the shadow of the roof at the top, and
      six similar ripples in a row at the bottom! And this is
      what people call 'painting nature'! It is, indeed, painting
      nature, as she appears to the most unfeeling and untaught of
      mankind. The bargeman and the bricklayer probably see no more
      in Venice than Canaletto gives--heaps of earth and mortar,
      with water between--and are just as capable of appreciating
      the facts of sunlight and shadow, by which he deceives us,
      as the most educated of us all. But what more there is in
      Venice than brick and stone--what there is of mystery and
      death, and memory and beauty--what there is to be learned or
      lamented, to be loved or wept--we look for to Canaletto in
      vain" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. sec. ii. pt. i. ch. vii. §
      7, first edition). Canaletto's pictures of Venice in this room
      should be compared with Turner's. It is impossible to get a
      more instructive instance of the different impression made on
      different minds by the same scenes. Canaletto drew, says one
      of his admirers (_Lanzi_, ii. 317), exactly as he saw. Well,
      what he did see we have shown us here. What others have seen,
      those who have not been to Venice can discover from Turner's
      pictures, from Shelley's and Byron's verse, or Ruskin's prose.
      "Let the reader restore Venice in his imagination to some
      resemblance of what she must have been before her fall. Let
      him, looking from Lido or Fusina, replace, in the forest of
      towers, those of the hundred and sixty-six churches which the
      French threw down; let him sheet her walls with purple and
      scarlet, overlay her minarets with gold, ... and fill her
      canals with gilded barges and bannered ships; finally, let him
      withdraw from this scene, already so brilliant, such sadness
      and stain as had been set upon it by the declining energies of
      more than half a century, and he will see Venice as it was seen
      by Canaletto (as it might have been seen by him, Ruskin means);
      whose miserable, virtueless, heartless mechanism, accepted
      as the representation of such various glory, is, both in its
      existence and acceptance, among the most striking signs of the
      lost sensation and deadened intellect of the nation at that
      time.... The mannerism of Canaletto is the most degraded that
      I know in the whole range of art. Professing the most servile
      and mindless imitation, it imitates nothing but the blackness
      of the shadows; it gives no single architectural ornament,
      however near, so much form, as might enable us even to guess
      at its actual one; ... it gives the buildings neither their
      architectural beauty nor their ancestral dignity, for there is
      no texture of stone nor character of age in Canaletto's touch;
      which is invariably a violent, black, sharp, ruled penmanlike
      line, as far removed from the grace of nature as from her
      faintness and transparency: and for his truth of colour let
      the single fact of his having omitted all record whatsoever
      of the frescoes, whose wrecks are still to be found at least
      on one half of the unrestored palaces, and, with still less
      excusableness, all record of the magnificent coloured marbles"
      (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 30).
      Stated in the fewest words, the difference between Canaletto
      and the others is this: To Canaletto Venice was a city of murky
      shadows, to them it is a city of enchanted colour. But his
      pictures satisfied the taste of his time, as the great number
      of them still extant testifies. Moreover his fame extended
      beyond his own country. There was an English resident at Venice
      who engaged Canaletto (who started in life at his father's
      profession, that of scene painter) to work for him at low
      prices, and then used to retail the pictures at an enormous
      profit to English travellers. At last Canaletto came to England
      himself, and was given many commissions; but after two years he
      returned to Venice, as it was still Venetian pictures that his
      patrons wanted. How completely the public taste has now changed
      is shown by the fact that the Venice of all the most popular
      painters to-day, of whatever nation, is the Venice of Ruskin
      and Turner. Canaletto's pictures, however, will always possess
      one element of interest, apart from any fluctuations in taste.
      Within his limits they are historical records of the appearance
      of Venice in his time; and as more and more of the old Venice
      is destroyed, Canaletto's pictures will increase in interest.
      For though he is mechanical, yet his mechanism is very good.
      He was, by the way, the first to apply the camera obscura to
      linear perspective, and he painted in a workmanlike manner, so
      that his pictures endure.[96]

An interesting piece of "old Venice." Beyond the canal is what is
now the National Gallery of Venice--the Academy of Arts--but was
in Canaletto's time still the Scuola della Carità, the conventual
buildings of the Brotherhood of our Lady of Charity. Notice the green
grass in the little square: the Campo, as it is called (the field), is
now covered with flagstones (there is a sketch of this spot among the
Turner drawings given by Ruskin to the University Galleries at Oxford:
see _Guide to the Venetian Academy_, p. 34).


134. A LANDSCAPE.

  _Cornelius Gerritz Decker_ (Dutch: died 1678).

      "Amongst the artists who followed the footsteps of Ruysdael and
      Hobbema, the one who most nearly resembled these masters was
      Cornelius Decker, whose works may be classed among the best
      Dutch landscapes" (Havard's _Dutch School_, p. 209). He painted
      at Haarlem, and studied under Salomon Ruysdael (see 1344).


135. LANDSCAPE WITH RUINS.

  _Canaletto_ (Venetian: 1697-1768). _See_ 127.

The artist, "disgusted with his first profession (of scene painter),
removed," we are told, "while still young to Rome, where he wholly
devoted himself to drawing views from nature, and in particular from
ancient ruins" (_Lanzi_, ii. 317).


137. LANDSCAPE.

  _Jan van Goyen_ (Dutch: 1596-1656).

      Jan van Goyen, one of the first masters in the native Dutch
      art of landscape as opposed to the exotic work of the
      Italianisers, was born at Leyden in 1596. He studied with the
      elder Swanenburch, the father of Rembrandt's first master,
      and subsequently went to Haarlem to work under Esaias van de
      Velde. His position in the world of art was considerable. In
      1640 he was President of the Guild of St. Luke at the Hague;
      his portrait was painted by Vandyck and Frans Hals; and Jan
      Steen was his son-in-law. His earlier extant pictures date
      from 1621, his latest go down to the year of his death. His
      production during this period of thirty-five years was immense;
      "a single London expert claims to have had at least three or
      four hundred genuine pictures by the master passing through
      his hands during the last thirty years." Like so many of the
      Dutch masters whose works are now prized, he received in his
      lifetime very small sums for his pictures--often not more than
      fifteen or twenty florins apiece. He tried to help his income
      by speculating in houses, and even, after the fashion of the
      time, in tulips. But he died insolvent. His work, however, and
      influence remained. His extant pictures are very numerous; and
      among the successors whose skill was largely formed by him are
      Cuyp, Jan van de Cappelle, and Salomon Ruysdael. "The subjects
      which he preferred were of two kinds: flat landscapes with a
      little broken ground in the front, a cottage, the figures of a
      few peasants, and a clump of trees; or, on the other hand,--and
      these are his best and most characteristic productions--broad
      views of the river scenery of Holland, a wide expanse of water
      under a wide sky." He was one of the first to discover a poetry
      in the unbroken horizons of his native land. "Where he is at
      his best is in the painting of the infinitely varied sky that
      overhangs a great Dutch river or estuary, the clouds taking at
      every movement new shapes or new effects of light and shade,
      and the water below reflecting them" (see an article on "The
      Landscape Painters of Holland" in _The Quarterly Review_,
      October 1891). In order to give his favourite effects, he
      generally placed the skyline very low in the picture, sometimes
      not more than a quarter of the canvas being given to the
      landscape. Van Goyen aimed rather at tone than at colour.
      "His silvery river-views, with all their delicate shades of
      grey, are almost studies in monochrome." In his landscapes
      the foliage and the herbage partake more or less of brown or
      gray. "No heavy, dark, no bright colour disturbs," says Sir F.
      Burton, "the dreamy monotone."

This work was formerly ascribed to J. Ruysdael.


138. A VIEW IN ROME.

  _Giovanni Antonio Panini_ (Roman: 1695-1768).

      Panini, who obtained celebrity as a painter of architectural
      subjects, was born at Piacenza, and studied in Rome. His
      settled place of abode was that city, but for some time he
      lived in Paris, and in 1732 he was elected a member of the
      French Academy.

Roman ruins with the pyramid of Caius Cestius.


140. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Bartholomeus van der Helst_ (Dutch: 1611-1670).

      Of the life of Van der Helst, one of the most distinguished
      of the Dutch portrait painters, little is known, except that
      he resided constantly at Amsterdam, and was in good practice
      there as a portrait painter. He had a part in founding the
      Painters' Guild there, whilst his likeness of Paul Potter at
      the Hague (1654), and his partnership with Bakhuizen, who
      laid in the backgrounds of some of his pictures in 1668,
      indicate a constant companionship with the best artists of
      the time. His masterpiece is in the Museum at Amsterdam. It
      contains thirty-five portraits, whole length, and represents
      a banquet given by a company of the civil-guard of Amsterdam,
      in commemoration of the Peace of Münster, in 1648. Sir Joshua
      Reynolds, in his _Journey to Flanders and Holland_, says of
      that work that it "is, perhaps, the first picture of portraits
      in the world, comprehending more of those qualities which make
      a perfect portrait than any other I have ever seen." Whilst
      delighted with Van der Helst, Sir Joshua was disappointed by
      Rembrandt; and certainly "Van der Helst attracts by qualities
      entirely differing from those of Rembrandt and Frans Hals:
      nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the
      strong concentrated light and the deep gloom of Rembrandt,
      and the contempt of chiaroscuro peculiar to his rival, except
      the contrast between the rapid sketchy touch of Hals and the
      careful finish of Van der Helst."

This picture is dated 1647.


146. A VIEW ON THE MAES.

  _Abraham Storck_ (Dutch: 1630-1710).

      About the life of this marine painter nothing is known. His
      pictures usually represent views near Amsterdam, "with a
      variety of shipping and boats, and a number of small figures,
      correctly drawn, and handled with spirit. His ships are well
      drawn, his colouring clear and transparent, and his skies and
      water light and floating" (Bryan).

Rotterdam is seen in the distance.


147. CEPHALUS AND AURORA.


148. THE TRIUMPH OF GALATEA.

  _Agostino Carracci_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1557-1602).

      Agostino was the elder brother of Annibale Carracci (see
      under 9) and cousin of Lodovico (see under 28). It was he
      who composed the well-known sonnet in which the aims of the
      Eclectic School are set forth. He was the most learned of the
      Carracci, being painter, engraver, poet, and musician, and
      well versed in the arts and sciences generally. His pictures
      are rare. The best is the "Communion of St. Jerome" in the
      Academy at Bologna. His prints are numerous; his engraving
      of Tintoretto's "Crucifixion," executed at Venice in 1589,
      was highly praised by that artist. In the same year Agostino
      returned to Bologna, and became the principal teacher in the
      school of the Carracci. He afterwards went to Rome to assist
      Annibale in the frescoes for the Farnese Palace. He executed
      the "Cephalus and Aurora" and "Galatea" in that series; his
      success excited the jealousy of Annibale, and caused a feud
      between the two brothers. Agostino thereupon left Rome for
      Parma, where he died shortly afterwards.

These are the cartoons made by Agostino for the frescoes referred
to above. They formed part of Sir Thomas Lawrence's collection of
drawings. In 147, Cephalus, while on a hunting expedition on Mount
Hymettus, is forcibly carried off by Aurora. The aged Tithonus, her
husband, is sleeping in the foreground. In 148, the sea-nymph Galatea
is borne on the ocean by Glaucus, preceded by Triton blowing his horn,
and surrounded by Nereids and Cupids on Dolphins.


149. A CALM AT SEA.

  _Willem van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707).

      William Van de Velde, the younger, was the son of an artist
      of the same name, and the two together were the most famous
      sea-painters of their time. The father was specially
      commissioned by the East India Company to paint several of
      their ships. The son was for a time engaged in painting the
      chief naval battles of the Dutch. In 1675 they were both
      established in England, living at Greenwich, as painters
      to King Charles II., who granted each of them a pension of
      £100 a year; the father "for taking and making draughts of
      sea-fights"; and the son "for putting the said draughts into
      colours." The Vandeveldes, thus employed, "produced," says
      Macaulay, "for the king and his nobles some of the finest
      sea-pieces in the world." "The palm," says Walpole, "is not
      less disputed with Raphael for history than with Vandevelde
      for sea-pieces." But in no branch of art has the English
      School of this century made more conspicuous advance than in
      sea-painting, and those who are fresh from reminiscences of
      Turner or Lee, or, amongst later artists, of Hook and Moore
      and Brett, will hardly be inclined to agree at this day with
      such high praise of Vandevelde. "It is not easily understood,"
      says Ruskin, "considering how many there are who love the sea,
      and look at it, that Vandevelde and such others should be
      tolerated. Foam appears to me to curdle and cream on the wave
      sides, and to fly flashing from their crests, and not to be
      set astride upon them like a peruke; and waves appear to me to
      fall, and plunge, and toss, and nod, and crash over, and not
      to curl up like shavings; and water appears to me, when it is
      grey, to have the grey of stormy air mixed with its own deep,
      heavy, thunderous, threatening blue, and not the grey of the
      first coat of cheap paint on a deal floor."

      "It is not easy to understand," perhaps, but two helps towards
      understanding may be mentioned in Ruskin's own words. First,
      previous painters--including even the Venetians, sea-folk
      though they were--had all treated the sea conventionally.
      Vandevelde and his fellows, at any rate, endeavoured to study
      it from nature. Bakhuizen, as we shall see, like Turner
      after him, used to go to sea in all weathers, the better to
      obtain "impressions." Hence the Dutch sea-painting did mark
      an advance, and how great was its influence on later artists
      and sea-lovers we know from the case of Turner, who "painted
      many pictures in the manner of Vandevelde, and always painted
      the sea too grey, and too opaque, in consequence of his early
      study of him." And this grey and opaque rendering of the sea by
      the Dutch was to some extent due to natural causes. "Although
      in artistical qualities lower than is easily by language
      expressible, the Italian marine painting usually conveys an
      idea of three facts about the sea,--that it is green, that
      it is deep, and that the sun shines on it. The dark plain
      which stands for far-away Adriatic with the Venetians, and
      the glinting swells of tamed wave which lap about the quays
      of Claude, agree in giving the general impression that the
      ocean consists of pure water, and is open to the pure sky. But
      the Dutch painters, while they attained considerably greater
      dexterity than the Italian in mere delineation of nautical
      incident, were by nature precluded from ever becoming aware of
      these common facts; and having, in reality, never in all their
      lives seen the sea, but only a shallow mixture of sea-water
      and sand; and also never in all their lives seen the sky, but
      only a lower element between them and it, composed of marsh
      exhalation and fog-bank,--they are not to be with too great
      severity reproached for the dulness of their records of the
      nautical enterprise of Holland. _We_ only are to be reproached,
      who, familiar with the Atlantic, are yet ready to accept with
      faith, as types of sea, the small waves _en papillote_ and
      peruke-like puffs of farinaceous foam, which were the delight
      of Bakhuizen and his compeers"[97] (_Modern Painters_, vol. i.
      pt. ii. sec. v. ch. i. § 20; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 30;
      _On the Old Road_, i. 283; _Harbours of England_, p. 18). The
      storms of Van der Velde are certainly unattractive, but the
      silvery daylight of his "calms at sea" gives to many of his
      works an enduring charm. This painter is well represented both
      in the Dulwich Gallery and in the Wallace collection.


150. A GALE AT SEA.

  _Willem van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707). _See_ 149.


151. A RIVER SCENE.

  _Jan van Goyen_ (Dutch: 1596-1656). _See_ 137.

Signed with the artist's name, and dated 1645.


152. AN EVENING LANDSCAPE.

  _Aart van der Neer_ (Dutch: 1603-1677).

      This painter was a native of Amsterdam, and lived and worked
      there. His pictures are now much appreciated; but he died
      destitute, and the pictures he left behind him were valued at
      only three florins apiece.

Aart (Arthur) van der Neer is the Dutch painter of "the hues and
harmonies of evening." Before the door of the country house are a lady
and gentleman, who have come out as if to gaze on one of such effects.
This is one of the largest of his pictures--which is the more valuable
as the figures are by Cuyp, whose name is inscribed on the pail; but
239 is perhaps more attractive.


153. THE CRADLE.

  _Nicolas Maes_ (Dutch: 1632-1693).

      Maes (or, in more modern form, Maas), was a pupil of Rembrandt,
      and ranks high among Dutch masters, being distinguished from
      many of the _genre_ painters by his richer colouring. "He
      assimilated the principles of his master," says Sir. F. Burton,
      "without adopting his subjects. In the class of pictures by
      which he is best known, namely, indoor scenes taken from
      ordinary life, he unites subtlety of chiaroscuro, vigorous
      colour, and great mastery in handling, with that true finish
      which never becomes trivial. The figures are finely drawn, and
      their action is perfect. Harmonies of red and black prevail
      in these works--sometimes pervading the picture in subdued
      tones; sometimes brought out in full contrasting force against
      white. The smaller pictures by Maes in this Gallery are among
      the finest examples of the former mode of treatment." Maes
      entered Rembrandt's studio in 1650 and remained there four
      years. He then returned to Dort, his native town, where he
      lived till 1678. In that year he moved to Amsterdam, where he
      remained to the end of his life, and was employed by most of
      the distinguished persons of his time. In these latter years
      he was mostly engaged in portraits. His earlier portraits (of
      which No. 1277 is a good specimen) are worthy of a pupil of
      Rembrandt. The later portraits are so different in style and
      inferior in quality that some critics ascribe them to the
      painter's son or some other artist of the same name. "Maes's
      favourite colour," says Havard, "was red. No artist uses this
      colour with more boldness or more success than he does in his
      earlier works [note, _e.g._ the crimson curtain which forms the
      background in 1277]. For this reason doubts have been raised if
      he ever painted the series of large bewigged portraits which
      have been attributed to him, sombre and morose faces, uniformly
      set against a dark background. It is difficult to imagine the
      brilliant painter of 'The Cradle' forgetting his skill in light
      and shade and his love of nature, to give himself up, as in
      these commonplace productions, to mannerism and affectation"
      (_The Dutch School_, p. 100).


154. A MUSIC PARTY.

  _David Teniers, the younger_ (Flemish: 1610-1694).

      Teniers, though a Fleming by birth, belongs rather to the
      Dutch School in style--being one of the principal _genre_
      painters, of whom most of the other leading masters are Dutch.
      His art stands, however, in direct relation to that of the
      Flemish painters preceding him, through the want of spiritual
      motive common to him and to them. But Teniers and the _genre_
      painters carry this banishment of spiritual motive a step
      further. "Rubens often gives instructive and magnificent
      allegory. Rembrandt, pathetic or powerful fancies, founded on
      real Scripture-reading, and on his interest in the picturesque
      character of the Jew. And Van Dyck, a graceful rendering of
      received Scriptural legends. But (with Teniers) ... we lose,
      not only all faith in religion, but all remembrance of it.
      Absolutely now at last we find ourselves without sight of God
      in all the world.... Farthest savages had, and still have,
      their Great Spirit, or, in extremity, their feather-idols,
      large-eyed; but here in Holland we have at last got utterly
      done with it all. Our only idol glitters dimly, in tangible
      shape of a pint pot, and all the incense offered thereto comes
      out of a small censer or bowl at the end of a pipe." The
      place of Teniers in art history is, therefore, so far as the
      ideals of art go, that he is, _par excellence_, "the painter
      of the pleasures of the ale-house and card-table" (_Modern
      Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. §§ 10, 11; ch. viii. § 11).
      He did, indeed, occasionally venture on the ground of religious
      painting; but his essays in this sort are absurd. His devotion
      to _genre_ entirely hit the taste of his time, and his fame was
      rapid and enduring. He was taught the rudiments of art by his
      father, David Teniers, the elder, a mediocre painter of small
      rustic subjects (see 949); but his real masters were Rubens and
      Brouwer, though he did not actually study with them. In 1633,
      at the age of twenty-three, he received the dignity of master.
      Four years later he married the daughter of Velvet Breughel,
      the former ward of Rubens, who acted as witness at the marriage
      ceremony. His talents were in universal request. The Archduke
      Leopold-William, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, appointed
      him his private painter, and gave him an office in his
      household. Queen Christina of Sweden and King Philip IV. of
      Spain were amongst his patrons. He gave Don Juan of Austria
      lessons in painting, and this prince painted the portrait of
      Teniers's son, and presented it to the master as a token of his
      regard. In 1644 he was chosen to preside over the Antwerp Guild
      of Painters. In 1647 he took up his abode in Brussels. His
      country-seat at Perck (see 817) was a constant resort of the
      Spanish and Flemish nobility. Shortly after the death of his
      first wife in 1656 he married Isabella de Fren, daughter of the
      Secretary of the Council of Brabant, and he strove his utmost
      to prove his right to armorial bearings. The king declared his
      readiness to grant the request, but only on condition that
      Teniers should give up selling his pictures. Teniers did not
      accept the condition, and transferred his energies to procuring
      a charter for an Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp to which
      artists should alone be admitted, whereas the former Guild of
      St. Luke made no distinction between art and handicraft.

      The aristocratic leanings of Teniers may be detected in his
      pictures. He is indeed, as we have seen, "the painter of the
      ale-house." "He depicted the manners of the Flemish rustic,
      told of the intimacy of his domestic life and his happy, coarse
      laughter. His folk go to market, clean out the stable, milk the
      cows, raise the nets, sharpen knives, shoot off arrows, play
      at nine-pins or cards, bind up wounds, pull out teeth, cure
      bacon, make sausages, smoke, sing, dance, caress the girls,
      and, above all things, drink, like the live Flemings they are."
      Yet as compared with some other masters of _genre_, Teniers
      seems to treat his rustics somewhat from the outside. Their
      expressions are often exaggerated, and their gestures pass
      into grimace. "Brouwer knew more of taverns; Ostade was more
      thoroughly at home in cottages.... Teniers seems anxious to
      have it known that, far from indulging in the coarse amusements
      of the boors he is fond of painting, he himself lives in good
      style and looks like a gentleman. He never seems tired of
      showing the turrets of his château of Perck, and in the midst
      of rustic merry-makings we often see his family and himself
      received cap in hand by the joyous peasants" (_e.g._ in 817).
      So too, though many of his interiors are very good, Teniers is
      on the whole at his best in open-air scenes. In his skies he
      has given (says Ruskin) "some very wonderful passages" (_Modern
      Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. i. § 20; H. Hymans in
      _Encyclopædia Britannica_; Wauters's _Flemish School_, p. 294).
      Good examples of Teniers continue to be greatly appreciated.
      The Belgian Government, for instance, gave £5000 in 1867 for
      the "Village Pastoral," now in Brussels Museum. The taste of
      Teniers may justly be condemned; his technique will always
      be admired. "Take," says Ruskin, "a picture by Teniers, of
      sots quarrelling over their dice; it is an entirely clever
      picture--so clever that nothing in its kind has ever been done
      equal to it; but it is also an entirely base and evil picture.
      It is an expression of delight in the prolonged contemplation
      of a vile thing, and delight in that is an 'unmannered' or
      'immoral' quality" (_Crown of Wild Olive_, § 56). His bright
      palette, his freshness of handling, his straightforwardness
      in means and intent, give to the best works of Teniers a
      permanent interest. He "touched with a workmanly hand, such
      as we cannot see rivalled now"; and he seems "never to have
      painted indolently, but gave the purchaser his thorough money's
      worth of mechanism." Hence it is that Sir Joshua Reynolds,
      though condemning Teniers's vulgarity of subject, yet held
      up his pictures as models to students who wished to excel in
      execution. It should, however, be noted that his works vary
      very much in this respect. Many of his later pictures are
      painted so thinly that the ground is in places barely covered.
      They have been called "afternoons," not from their subject, but
      from the time the painter took in producing them.

This and the companion picture, 158, are characteristic specimens of
the painter. The human specimens are ugly and vulgar; the pottery is
pretty, and beautifully painted.


155. THE MONEY CHANGERS.

  _Teniers_ (Flemish: 1610-1694). _See under_ last picture.

A man and his wife--usurers, we may suppose--counting their money.
There is all the miser's misery in the withered careworn faces, all
the miser's greed in the thin, tremulous hands. The man alone seems
not quite to like some transaction which they are discussing; the
woman--Portia's prerogative of mercy being reversed--seems to be
thinking, "Come, man, don't be a fool: a bond is a bond."


156. A STUDY OF HORSES.

  _Van Dyck_ (Flemish: 1599-1641). _See_ 49.

An interesting sketch as illustrating Van Dyck's affection for the
horse. "In painting, I find that no real interest is taken in the
horse until Van Dyck's time, he and Rubens doing more for it than
all previous painters put together. Rubens was a good rider, and
rode nearly every day, as, I doubt not, Van Dyck also. The horse has
never, I think, been painted worthily again, since he died" (_Modern
Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 22).

The particular choice of subject in this sketch shows further in its
literary connection a lover of the horse. The subject, as we know
from the words _equi Achillis_ on a scroll in the left corner of the
picture, is the horses of Achilles, said for their swiftness to be the
sons of the wind Zephyrus: in the upper part of the picture is a sketch
of a zephyr's head. "The gentleness of chivalry, properly so called,
depends on the recognition of the order and awe of lower and loftier
animal-life, ... taught most perfectly by Homer in the fable of the
horses of Achilles. There is, perhaps, in all the _Iliad_ nothing more
deep in significance--there is nothing in all literature more perfect
in human tenderness, and honour for the mystery of inferior life,
than the verses that describe the sorrow of the divine horses at the
death of Patroclus, and the comfort given them by the greatest of the
gods"[98] (_Fors Clavigera_, 1871, ix. 13).


157. A LANDSCAPE: SUNSET.

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

For Rubens's landscapes see under 66. "It is to be noted, however,
that the licenses taken by Rubens in particular instances are as bold
as his general statements are sincere.... In the Sunset of our own
Gallery many of the shadows fall at right angles to the light" (_Modern
Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 15).


158. BOORS REGALING.

  _Teniers_ (Flemish: 1610-1694). _See_ 154.


159. THE DUTCH HOUSEWIFE.

  _Nicolas Maes_ (Dutch: 1632-1693). _See_ 153.

"There are few pictures in the National Gallery," says C. R. Leslie
(_Handbook for Young Painters_, p. 243), "before which I find myself
more often standing than at this." Its great attraction, he adds, is
"the delight of seeing a trait of childhood we have often observed and
been amused with in nature, for the first time so felicitously given by
art." The Dutch housewife sits intently engaged in scraping a parsnip,
whilst the child stands by her side "watching the process, as children
will stand and watch the most ordinary operations, with an intensity
of interest, as if the very existence of the whole world depended on
the exact manner in which that parsnip was scraped." Note the Flemish
_kruik_, or beer-jug, so often introduced into the pictures of Maes.
Signed and dated 1655.


160. A "RIPOSO."

  _Mola_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1612-1668). _See_ 69.

The Italians gave this title to the subject of the Holy Family resting
on the way in their flight to Egypt,--"the angel of the Lord appeareth
to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his
mother, and flee into Egypt."


161. AN ITALIAN LANDSCAPE.

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

Gaspard travelled largely in Italy in search of the picturesque, and
this striking landscape may be a recollection of the mountain scenery
in the North--possibly near Bergamo. The spray of foliage prominent on
the left is characteristic of Gaspard's method:--

      "One of the most remarkable characters of natural leafage is
      the constancy with which, while the leaves are arranged on the
      spray with exquisite regularity, that regularity is modified in
      their actual effect. For as in every group of leaves some are
      seen sideways, forming merely long lines, some foreshortened,
      some crossing each other, every one differently turned and
      placed from all the others, the forms of the leaves, though
      in themselves similar, give rise to a thousand strange and
      differing forms in the group.... Now go to Gaspard Poussin and
      take one of his sprays, where they come against the sky; you
      may count it all round: one, two, three, four, one bunch; five,
      six, seven, eight, two bunches; nine, ten, eleven, twelve,
      three bunches; with four leaves each; and such leaves! every
      one precisely the same as its neighbour, blunt and round at
      the end (where every forest leaf is sharp, except that of the
      fig-tree), tied together by the stalks, and so fastened on to
      the demoniacal claws above described (see under 68), one bunch
      to each claw" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. vi. ch.
      i. §§ 16, 17).


163. VENICE: A VIEW ON THE GRAND CANAL.

  _Canaletto_ (Venetian: 1697-1768). _See_ 127.

The Church, that of S. Simeone Piccolo, was built in Canaletto's time.
"One of the ugliest churches in Venice or elsewhere. Its black dome,
like an unusual species of gasometer, is the admiration of modern
Italian architects" (_Stones of Venice_, vol. iii. Venetian Index, _s.
v._ Simeone).


165. THE PLAGUE AT ASHDOD.

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

The Philistines having overcome the Israelites removed the ark of the
Lord to Ashdod, and placed it in the temple of their god Dagon. "And
when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen
upon his face to the earth before the ark ..." (seen here in the temple
to the right). "But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod,
and he smote them with a loathsome plague" (1 Samuel v. 4, 6).

The picture--a ghastly subject ghastlily treated--is yet a good
instance of Poussin's learned treatment. Everywhere the intention to
express alarm is obvious, and in the foreground are figures fleeing the
infection, with nose and mouth muffled. Others are engaged removing the
dead and dying, while in the centre are the dead bodies of a mother and
child; another child approaches the mother's breast, but the father
stoops down to avert it. A similar group to this occurs in a design
by Raphael, "Il Morbetto," and was also in the celebrated picture by
Aristides which Alexander the Great, at the sack of Thebes, claimed for
himself and sent to his palace at Pella (Wornum: _Epochs of Painting_,
p. 47, ed. 1864). This picture is a replica of one, now in the Louvre,
which was painted in Rome in 1630--Poussin receiving only 60 scudi
(about 12 guineas) for it.


166. A CAPUCHIN FRIAR.

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

Michel ascribes this portrait to the year of Rembrandt's tribulations.
"At this period, when his emotions were so deeply stirred by the
vision of a compassionate Saviour, he felt a kindred attraction for
those mystic souls who sought in solitude and prayer a closer communion
with the Christ to whom he felt himself drawn by his own sorrows. The
'Capuchin' in the National Gallery has suffered from time, but the
devout gravity of the face is finely expressed" (_Rembrandt: his Life,
his Work, and his Time_, ii. 126).


167. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

  _Peruzzi_ (Sienese: 1481-1537). _See_ 218.

This drawing--of the same composition as we see in the picture
No. 218--was made at Bologna in 1521 for Count Giovanni Battista
Bentivogli. The drawing was presented to the National Gallery by Lord
Vernon, together with a print from the plate engraved from it by
Agostino Carracci.


168. ST. CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA.

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

      This is a picture of Raphael's second period--"painted about
      the year 1507, to judge from its close resemblance in style
      to the celebrated picture of the Entombment in the Borghese
      (Rome), which is known to have been executed at that time."
      There are several studies for the picture in the University
      Galleries at Oxford, and another in the Chatsworth collection.
      The finished cartoon in black and white chalk, pricked for
      transfer to the panel, is exhibited in the Louvre.

A perfect picture of saintly resignation. St. Catherine (for whose
story see 693) leans on the wheel, the instrument of her martyrdom,
and "looks up to heaven in the dawn of the eternal day, with her lips
parted in the resting from her pain." Her right hand is pressed on her
bosom, as if she replied to the call from above, "I am here, O Lord!
ready to do Thy will." From above, a bright ray is seen streaming
down upon her, emblematic of the divine inspiration which enabled
her to confound her heathen adversaries. The studies existing show
the pains Raphael took with the exquisite expression; but the result
defies analysis. "It is impossible to explain in language the exact
qualities of the lines on which depend the whole truth and beauty of
expression about the half-opened lips of Raphael's St. Catherine." But
these lines should be noticed as exemplifying the principle of "vital
beauty"--of beauty, that is to say, as consisting in the appearance
in living things of felicitous fulfilment of function. Thus eyes and
mouths become more beautiful precisely as they become more perfect
means of moral expression. The mouth of a negro is ugly because it is
only a means of eating; the mouth of St. Catherine is beautiful for the
feeling it expresses (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch.
vii. § 47; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. xii. § 10, sec. ii. ch. v. §
21). It may be noticed, lastly, how much the pathetic feeling of the
picture is heightened by the herbage in the foreground, and especially
perhaps by the carefully-painted dandelion "clock": "so soon passeth it
away, and we are gone."


169. THE HOLY FAMILY.

  _Ludovico Mazzolino_ (Ferrarese: 1480-1528).

      Ludovico Mazzolino, "whose brilliant colours play through
      all shades," has been called "the glowworm of the Ferrarese
      School;" creamy-toned backgrounds of architectural subjects
      also enrich his compositions. "He was principally a _genre_
      painter, though in his early period he is said to have worked
      much in fresco. His brilliant colouring made him a favourite
      with art-loving prelates of succeeding generations; hence
      his small pictures abound in Roman collections" (_Italian
      Painters_, Borghese Gallery, p. 219). Morelli elsewhere adds
      the conjecture that Mazzolino studied at Ferrara under Domenico
      Pannetti. In another of his characteristics--the minuteness,
      namely, of his work--he resembles rather the Flemish School.
      Of his life little or nothing is known; but his interest in
      decorative craftsmanship is proved by his pictures.

The background and accessories here, as well as in 641, are
particularly interesting as a record of the decorative art of the
time. A few years before the date of these pictures the Pope Leo X.
had unearthed the buried treasures of the Baths of Titus, and Giovanni
da Udine rediscovered the mode by which their stucco decorations were
produced. This method of modelling in wet plaster on walls and ceilings
was extensively used in house decoration from that time down to the
middle of the last century, but has since then been supplanted by the
cheaper process of casting. No sooner was Giovanni da Udine's invention
known than it must have been adopted by Ferrarese artists, for here we
find Mazzolino portraying it in the background of his picture. As in
Tura's pilaster (see 772), the winged sphere plays a principal part in
the design, for it was a favourite badge of the ducal house of Ferrara.
Nor is it only in the plaster modelling that Mazzolino's interest in
decorative art shows itself. The back of the bench on which the Madonna
sits is crowned by the most delicate carving, whilst up aloft, peeping
over the wall on which the plaster work occurs, there is a choir of
angels playing on a portable organ, which is full of suggestions for
decorative design (G. T. Robinson in _Art Journal_, May 1886, pp. 151,
152).


170. THE HOLY FAMILY.

  _Garofalo_ (Ferrarese; 1481-1559). _See_ 81.

Notice the rich cap in which the little St. John is dressed; it is not
unlike those which French and Flemish children are still made to wear
as a protection from tumbles. There is a grace in the figures of the
Virgin and St. Elizabeth which recalls Raphael. A less happy effect of
his influence may be seen in the vision of the heavenly host above,
full of that exaggerated action which marks the decadence of Italian
art. God the Father is represented gesticulating wildly, almost like an
actor in melodrama. And so with the playing angels. In pictures of the
great time they are shown "with uninterrupted and effortless
gesture ... singing as calmly as the Fates weave" (_Relation between
Michael Angelo and Tintoret_, p. 15), but here they are all scrambling
through their songs, their hair floating in the breeze and their faces
full of excited gesture.


172. THE SUPPER AT EMMAUS.

  _Caravaggio_ (Naturalist: 1569-1609).

      Michael Angelo Amerighi, the son of a mason, is usually called
      Caravaggio from his birthplace, a town of that name near
      Milan.[99] He was the leader of the so-called "Naturalist"
      School (see introduction to "The Later Italian Schools"),
      which numbered among its disciples Spagnoletto (235) and the
      Dutch Gerard von Honthorst (1444). The characteristics of his
      art, as described below, were not out of keeping with the
      sombre character of the man.[100] He had established himself
      as a painter at Rome, when he had to fly for homicide. He was
      playing at tennis and became so violent in a dispute that he
      killed his companion. After a short stay at Naples he went to
      Malta, where he gained the favour of the grand-master, and was
      made a Knight of the Cross of Malta. His ungovernable temper,
      however, again led him into trouble, and quarrelling with one
      of the knights, he was cast into prison. He escaped to Sicily
      and thence returned to Naples. Having procured the Pope's
      pardon for his original offence, he hired a felucca and set
      sail for Rome. The coast-guard arrested him in mistake for
      another person; the crew of the felucca plundered him of all
      his belongings; and after wandering disconsolately along the
      coast, he was seized with fever, and died at the early age of
      forty.

One notices first in this picture the least important things--the
supper before the company, the roast chicken before Christ. Next one
sees how coarse and almost ruffianly are the disciples, represented
as supping with their risen Lord at Emmaus (Luke xxiv. 30, 31). Both
points are characteristic of the painter, who was driven by the
insipidities of the preceding mannerists into a crude "realism," which
made him resolve to describe sacred and historical events just as
though they were being enacted in a slum by butchers and fishwives.
"He was led away," says Lanzi (i. 452), "by his sombre genius, and
represented objects with very little light. He ridiculed all artists
who attempted a noble expression of countenance or graceful folding of
drapery." His first altar-piece was removed by the priests for whom it
was painted, as being too vulgar for such a subject. "Many interesting
studies from the taverns of Italy remain to prove Caravaggio's
mastery over scenes of common life. For the historian of manners in
seventeenth-century Italy, those pictures have a truly precious value,
as they are executed with such passion as to raise them above the more
careful but more lymphatic transcripts from beer-cellars in Dutch
painting. But when he applied his principles to higher subjects, then
vulgarity became apparent. It seems difficult for realism, either
in literature or art, not to fasten upon ugliness, vice, pain, and
disease, as though these imperfections of our nature were more real
than beauty, goodness, pleasure, and health. Therefore Caravaggio, the
leader of a school which the Italians christened Naturalists, may be
compared to Zola" (_Symonds_, vii. 221).


173. PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN.

  _Bassano_ (Venetian: 1510-1592).

      Jacopo da Ponte is commonly called Il Bassano or Jacopo
      da Bassano from his native town, near Venice. His father,
      Francesco, who was a painter in the school of the Bellini, was
      his first master; he afterwards studied under Bonifazio at
      Venice. After a short stay in that city, Jacopo returned to his
      native town, where he remained for the rest of a long life.
      "His best works are almost worthy," says Sir F. Burton, "of
      Titian. They are conspicuous among other qualities for Venetian
      excellence of colouring--especially in his green, where he
      exhibits a peculiar brilliancy. Most of his pictures seem at
      first sight as dazzling, then as cooling and soothing, as the
      best kind of stained glass; while the colouring of details,
      particularly of those under high lights, is jewel-like, as
      clear and deep and satisfying as rubies and emeralds." No. 228
      in this Collection has passages which illustrate this point.
      Jacopo was nearly contemporary with the great Tintoretto, but
      while the latter was the last of the Venetian painters in the
      grand style, Bassano after a time devoted himself to simple
      scenes of country life. His distinguishing place in the history
      of art is that he was the first Italian painter of _genre_--a
      painter, that is, _du genre bas_, painter of a low class of
      subjects, of familiar objects such as do not belong to any
      other recognised class of paintings (as history, portrait,
      etc.): see, for instance, No. 228, in which the religious
      subject merely gives the painter an opportunity for a scene
      of market life. "His pictures were for the inhabitants of the
      small market-town from which he takes his name, where, besides
      the gates, you still see men and women in rustic garb crouching
      over their many-coloured wares; and where, just outside the
      walls, you may see all the ordinary occupations connected
      with farming and grazing. Inspired, although unawares, by
      the new idea of giving perfectly modern versions of Biblical
      stories, Bassano introduced into nearly every picture he
      painted episodes from the life in the streets of Bassano and
      in the country just outside the gates. Another thing Bassano
      could not fail to do, working as he did in the country and
      for country people, was to paint landscape. He loved to paint
      the real country. He was, in fact, the first modern landscape
      painter" (Berenson: _Venetian Painters of the Renaissance_, §
      xxi). "Giovanni Bellini places his figure in the crystal air
      of an Italian morning; Titian and Tintoretto give us daylight,
      mighty while subdued; but Bassano throws a lurid grey over his
      landscape and carries the eye to the solemn twilight spread
      along the distant horizon. This peculiarity of feature is
      partly accounted for by the position of the town of Bassano,
      which is wrapped in an early twilight by the high mountains
      above it on the west" (Layard's edition of _Kugler_, ii. 624).

A fine portrait--somewhat recalling Rembrandt in style--of a very
refined face. In the vase beside him is a sprig of myrtle. This painter
is fond of introducing such vases: see one in 277. In the principal
street of Bassano, where the artist was born and, after studying at
Venice, continued to live, such vessels may still be seen placed out
for sale.


174. PORTRAIT OF CARDINAL CERRI.

  _Carlo Maratti_ (Roman: 1625-1713).

      Carlo Maratti (called also Carlo delle Madonne, from the large
      number of Madonna pictures that he painted) was an imitator of
      Raphael, and for nearly half a century the most eminent painter
      in Rome. The portrait of a cardinal should have come kindly
      to him, for he was in the service of several popes, and was
      appointed superintendent of the Vatican Chambers by Innocent XI.


176. ST. JOHN AND THE LAMB.

  _Murillo_ (Spanish: 1618-1682). _See 13._

An interesting illustration of the substitution of the palpable image
for the figurative phrase. The mission of St. John the Baptist was to
prepare the way for Christ, to proclaim to the people "Behold the Lamb
of God!" Murillo makes the standard of the Lamb, with those words upon
it, lie upon the ground below; but he further represents the young St.
John as embracing an actual lamb.


177. THE MAGDALEN.

  _Guido_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). _See 11._

Just such a picture as might have suggested the lines in Pope's epistle
on "The Characters of Women"--

    Let then the fair one beautifully cry,
    In Magdalen's loose hair and lifted eye;
    Or dress'd in smiles of sweet Cecilia shine,
    With simpering angels, palms, and harps divine;
    Whether the charmer sinner it, or saint it,
    If folly grow romantic, I must paint it.

Just such a picture, too, as Guido turned out in numbers. "He was
specially fond," says one of his biographers, "of depicting faces with
upraised looks, and he used to say that he had a hundred different
modes" of thus supplying sentimentality to order.


179. VIRGIN AND CHILD ENTHRONED.


180. A PIETÀ.

  _Francia_ (Ferrarese-Bolognese: 1450-1517).

      Of Francesco Raibolini's life the two most interesting things
      are these: first, that great artist though he came to be,
      he never painted a picture, so far as we know, till he was
      forty; and secondly, the intimate connection, exemplified in
      him, between the artist and the craftsman. He was the son of
      a carpenter, and, like so many of the greatest old masters,
      was brought up to the goldsmith's trade. The name of Francia
      was that of his master in goldsmith's work, and was adopted by
      him in gratitude.[101] He attained great skill in his trade,
      especially as a die-engraver and a worker in "niello" (inlaying
      a black composition into steel or silver). He was appointed
      steward of the Goldsmiths' Guild in 1483, and afterwards became
      master of the Mint--a post which he held till his death.
      In some of his earlier pictures the hand of a goldsmith is
      seen--in the clear outline, the metallic and polished surface,
      and the minuteness of detail; and even on some of his later
      and more important works, such as 179, he signed himself
      "Francia _aurifex_ (goldsmith) Bononiensis." It was with Costa,
      the Ferrarese artist (see 629), who migrated to Bologna, and
      with whom he entered into partnership, that Francia learnt
      the art of painting, and thus, though a Bolognese, he is
      properly included in the Ferrarese School. His work marks the
      culminating point of that school, just as Raphael's[102] marks
      that of the Umbrian, and in these pictures (originally one
      altar-piece, painted for the Buonvisi chapel in S. Frediano
      at Lucca, where, says Vasari, it was held to be of great
      value) we have some of his best work. Many of his pictures are
      still at Bologna, including the one which some consider his
      _chef d'oeuvre_, the Bentivoglio altar-piece in S. Giacomo
      Maggiore. Francia is the most pathetic of painters. Raphael
      is said to have remarked that Francia's Madonnas were the most
      devoutly beautiful he knew,[103] and there is considerable
      affinity between Francia and Perugino. But the Umbrian master
      was more ideal; in Francia there are touches of realism. "It
      will be observed in No. 180 that the Virgin is represented as
      a middle-aged woman, and that the lids of the angels' eyes are
      red with weeping. In spirit also they are different. Francia
      makes his angels appeal to the spectator as if to enlist his
      sympathy in the pathos of the tragedy, holding up the beautiful
      tresses of Christ's hair to aid in the appeal. This Perugino
      would never have done; his angels, and his saints also, are
      always wrapt in a spiritual ecstasy to which Francia could not
      attain" (Monkhouse: _In the National Gallery_, p. 173).

(179) On the throne are the Virgin and her mother, St. Anne, who offers
the infant Christ a peach, symbolical, as the fruit thus offered in
these pictures originally was, of "the fruits of the spirit--joy,
peace, and love." At the foot of the throne stands the little St. John
(the Baptist), "one of the purest creations of Christian art," holding
in his arms the cross of reeds and the scroll inscribed "Ecce Agnus
Dei" ("Behold the Lamb of God"). The discovery of Benedetto Buonvisi's
will has shown why the various saints were selected--St. Anne, because
the Buonvisi chapel was dedicated to her; St. Lawrence as the patron of
the founder's father; St. Paul as the patron of the founder's brother
and heir; St. Sebastian as the saint invoked in plagues (from which
calamity Lucca suffered in 1510); and St. Benedict as the patron of the
founder (G. C. Williamson's _Francia_, p. 111).

(180) This picture, which was the "lunette," or arch, forming the top
of the altar-piece, is a "pietà," _i.e._ the Virgin and two angels
weeping over the dead body of Christ. The artist has filled his picture
with that solemn reverential pity, harmonised by love, which befits
his subject. The body of Christ--utterly dead, yet not distorted nor
defaced by death--is that of a tired man whose great soul would not
let him rest while there was still His father's work to do on earth.
In the face of the angel at His head there is a look of quiet joy, as
of one who knows that "death is but a covered way that leads into the
light"; in the attitude and expression of the angel at the feet there
is prayerful sympathy for the sorrowing mother. The face of the mother
herself, which before was pure and calm, is now tear-stained and sad,
because her son has met so cruel a death--

    What else in life seems piteous any more
    After such pity?

Yet it bears a look of content because the world has known him. She
rests His body tenderly on her knee as she did when he was a little
child--thus are "the hues of the morning and the solemnity of eve,
the gladness in accomplished promise, and sorrow of the sword-pierced
heart, gathered into one human Lamp of ineffable love" (_Modern
Painters_, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. v. § 21).


181. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. JOHN.

  _Perugino_ (_Umbrian_: 1446-1523). _See 288._

If really by Perugino,[104] this must be one of his early works. It is
painted in _tempera_. The Flemish process of oil-painting found its
way to Venice, where Perugino is known to have been in 1494, and where
he probably learnt it. The superiority of the new method may be seen
in a moment by comparing the cracked surface and faded colours of this
picture with 288, which was painted when Perugino had obtained complete
mastery over the new medium, and which is still as bright and fresh as
when it was painted. The style of this picture is, however, thoroughly
Peruginesque. It is interesting to compare the Umbrian type of the
Madonna--innocent and girl-like, with an air of far-off reverie--with
the types of other schools. The Umbrian Madonna is less mature, more
etherealised than the Venetian. She is a girl, rather than a mother.
Therein she resembles the Florentine type; but an air of dreamy reverie
in the Umbrian takes the place of the intellectual mysticism of
the Florentine. In Perugino "the Umbrian type finds its fullest and
highest representative. Dainty small features, all too babyish for
the figures that bear them; a mouth like a cupid's bow; a tiny and
delicate chin; eyes set well apart, with curiously heavy and drooping
lids; faint pencilled eyebrows; a broad smooth forehead,--these are the
main elements in Perugino's Madonnas" (Grant Allen in the _Pall Mall
Magazine_, 1895, p. 620).


184. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG LADY.

  _Nicolas Lucidel_ (German: 1527-1590).

      Lucidel (a name which is supposed to be a corruption of
      Neufchatel) studied painting at Antwerp, and afterwards settled
      at Nuremberg. This picture, dated 1561, was formally ascribed
      to Sir Antonio More and supposed to represent Jeanne d'Archel;
      but it reveals (says the latest edition of the Official
      Catalogue) "in its style and its Upper German costume, the
      handiwork of Lucidel."

"The picture is much obscured," says Sir Edward Poynter, "by a coarse
brown varnish. A beautiful example of this master, in the collection of
Lord Spencer, is remarkable for the purity of its colour, and doubtless
this portrait had originally the same qualities" (_The National
Gallery_, i. 294).


186. PORTRAITS OF JAN ARNOLFINI AND HIS WIFE.

  _Jan van Eyck_ (Early Flemish: about 1390-1440).

      The Van Eycks--Hubert, the elder brother, and Jan--were natives
      of Maesyck (Eyck-sur-Meuse), and are famous as being the
      artists to whose ingenuity the first invention of the art of
      painting in oils was for a long time ascribed. The probability
      is that although the practice of mixing oil with colours was
      employed for decorative purposes in Germany and elsewhere long
      before their time, they were the first to so improve it as to
      make it fully serviceable for figure-painting.[105] The art of
      oil painting reached higher perfection in many ways after their
      time; but there is no picture in the Gallery which shows better
      than this, one great capacity of oil painting--its combination,
      namely, of "imperishable firmness with exquisite delicacy"
      (_On the Old Road_, i. 141). The place of the Van Eycks in
      the development of early Flemish art has been described in
      the introduction to that School, but the suddenness and
      completeness of their mastery remains among the wonders of
      painting. "The first Italian Renaissance," says Fromentin,
      "has nothing comparable to this. And in the particular order
      of sentiments they expressed and of the subjects they chose,
      one must admit that neither any Lombard School, nor Tuscan, nor
      Venetian, produced anything that resembles the first outburst
      of the School of Bruges." The two brothers were granted the
      freedom of the profession by the Corporation of Painters
      of Ghent in 1421. In that year Jan left Hubert and took an
      appointment as painter to Count John of Bavaria at the Hague.
      In 1424 he returned to Bruges as painter to Philip, Duke of
      Burgundy, in whose service he remained to the end of his life.
      Like Rubens, the painter Jan van Eyck "amused himself with
      being ambassador." "He was frequently employed on missions of
      trust; and following the fortunes of a chief who was always in
      the saddle, he appears for a time to have been in ceaseless
      motion, receiving extra pay for secret services at Leyden,
      drawing his salary at Bruges, yet settled in a fixed abode at
      Lille. In 1428 he joined the embassy sent by Philip the Good to
      Lisbon to beg the hand of Isabella of Portugal. His portrait of
      the bride fixed the Duke's choice. After his return he settled
      finally at Bruges, where he married, and his wife bore him
      a daughter, known in after years as a nun in the convent of
      Maesyck. At the christening of this child the Duke was sponsor;
      and this was but one of the many distinctions by which Philip
      the Good rewarded his painter's merits" (Crowe). But never was
      there an artist less puffed up. "Jan van Eyck was here." "As
      I can, not as I would." Such signatures are the sign-marks of
      modesty. In 1426 his brother Hubert died, leaving the great
      altar-piece--the Adoration of the Lamb--for Jan to finish.
      This masterpiece of the Van Eycks was in 1432 set up in the
      Chapel of St. Bavon at Ghent, where the central portions still
      remain--the other original panels being now at Brussels and
      Berlin. The portraits by Jan in our Gallery belong to the next
      three years. There are no finer specimens of his marvellous
      precision and delicacy in this branch of the art.

This wonderful picture of a Flemish interior--dated 1434--is as spruce
and clean now (for the small twig broom did its work so well that the
goodman and his wife were not afraid to walk on the polished floor
without their shoes), as it was when first painted five hundred years
ago. This is the more interesting from the eventful history the picture
has had. At one time we hear of a barber-surgeon at Bruges presenting
it to the Queen-regent of the Netherlands, who valued it so highly
that she pensioned him in return for the gift. At another it must have
passed again into humbler hands, for General Hay found it in the room
to which he was taken in 1815 at Brussels to recover from wounds at
the battle of Waterloo. He purchased the picture after his recovery,
and sold it to the British Government in 1842. "It is," says Sir
Edward Poynter, "one of the most precious possessions in the national
collection, and, in respect of its marvellous finish, combined with
the most astounding truth of imitation and effect, perhaps the most
remarkable picture in the world."

For the delicacy of workmanship note especially the mirror, in which
are reflected not only the objects in the room, but others beyond what
appears in the picture, for a door and two additional figures may be
distinguished. In the frame of the mirror, too, are ten diminutive
pictures of the ten "moments" in the Passion of Christ "as material
for the lady's meditation while doing her hair." Notice also the
brass-work of the chandelier. "There are many little objects about,
such as an orange on the window-sill, placed there to catch the light.
Through the window you can see a cherry-tree, with sunshine on the
ripe fruit. In the treatment of these and similar details Jan van
Eyck shows a liking for dots and spots of light" (Conway). Above the
chandelier, elaborately wrought, is the painter's signature. This
signature (in Latin), "Jan van Eyck was here," exactly expresses the
modesty and veracity which were the keynote of his art. The artist only
professed to come, to see, and to record what he saw. Arnolfini was the
representative at Bruges of a Lucca firm of merchants, and Van Eyck
gives us a picture of the quiet, dry, business folk exactly as he found
them.


187. THE APOTHEOSIS OF WILLIAM THE TACITURN OF HOLLAND.

  _Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See 38._

A sketch of a picture in the possession of the Earl of Jersey. This
sketch was formerly in the possession of Sir David Wilkie, R.A.


189. THE DOGE LEONARDO LOREDANO.

  _Giovanni Bellini_ (Venetian: 1426-1516).

      Giovanni Bellini (often shortened into Giambellini)--the
      greatest of the fifteenth-century artists--"the mighty
      Venetian master who alone of all the painters of Italy
      united purity of religious aim with perfection of artistical
      power"[106]--belonged, it is interesting to note, to a
      thoroughly artistic family. His father, Jacopo, drawings by
      whom may be seen in the British Museum, was an artist of
      repute; his elder brother Gentile (see 1213) was another. The
      two brothers studied together in their father's school at
      Padua, and there they formed a friendship with Mantegna, who
      afterwards married their sister. Two pictures in our Gallery
      (Bellini's, 726; and Mantegna's, 1417) recall the days of
      their early association. By blood every inch an artist, so was
      Giovanni also in character. His life was one long devotion
      to his art. He lived to be ninety, and showed to the end
      increasing knowledge and power. Albert Dürer wrote in 1506,
      when the grand old man was eighty, that "though very old he was
      still the best painter in Venice."[107]

      This famous portrait must have been painted about the same
      time, for Leonardo Loredano only became Doge in 1501. About
      1460, Bellini had settled in Venice, where he soon rivalled and
      eclipsed the established school of the Vivarini. In 1479, when
      his elder brother Gentile departed to Constantinople, Giovanni
      was appointed in his place to carry on the series of pictures
      for the Hall of the Great Council in the Ducal Palace. These
      works were destroyed by fire in 1577. The documents referring
      to them show the terms on which he worked. He was engaged at
      a fixed rate of salary to work "constantly and daily, so that
      said pictures may be completed as expeditiously as possible,
      with three assistants, also paid by the State, to render speedy
      and diligent assistance." One of these assistants was Carpaccio
      (see 750). Three years later he was appointed State painter to
      the Republic. His fame is sounded by Ariosto, who in "Orlando
      Furioso" ranks him with Leonardo. It may be gathered also
      from the number of great painters who attended his studio,
      including Giorgione and Titian. He was overwhelmed with work,
      and doubtless employed assistants to complete commissions from
      his design. Hence the confusion that exists in the matter of
      attribution among pictures of this school (see under 599).
      With Titian he was on terms of warm friendship, and his last
      work (a companion piece to Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne," now
      in the Duke of Northumberland's Gallery at Alnwick) was left
      for Titian to finish. Bellini was buried in the Church of SS.
      Giovanni e Paolo, in the same tomb where Gentile had lain since
      1507.

      Giovanni Bellini's long life covers the end of one period
      and the beginning of another in the history of Italian art.
      In point of technique this is so: his earliest works are in
      tempera, his later ones in oil--the use of which medium he
      learnt perhaps from Antonello da Messina. It is so also in
      motive. "The iridescence of dying statesmanship in Italy, her
      magnificence of hollow piety, were represented in the arts of
      Venice and Florence by two mighty men on either side--Titian
      and Tintoret, Michael Angelo and Raphael. Of the calm and
      brave statesmanship, the modest and faithful religion,
      which had been her strength, I am content to name one chief
      representative artist at Venice, John Bellini." The years of
      change were 1480-1520 (roughly speaking those of Raphael's
      life). "John Bellini precedes the change, meets and resists it
      victoriously till his death. Nothing of flaw or failure is ever
      to be discerned in him" (_Relation between Michael Angelo and
      Tintoret_, pp. 11-13). His position is thus unique: he was the
      meeting-point of two ways: as great in artistic power as the
      masters who came after, as pure in religious aim as those who
      went before. An interesting episode is recorded which marks
      the transition and Bellini's meeting of it. Isabella Gonzaga,
      the Duchess of Mantua, wrote in 1501 to her agent in Venice to
      get Bellini to do for her a picture of which the subject was
      to be profane, to suit Mantegna's allegories. Bellini suggests
      that he cannot do such a subject in a way to compare with
      Mantegna; with such a subject "he cannot do anything to look
      well." Isabella thereupon is content to put up with a religious
      subject, but Bellini on his side agrees to add "a distant
      landscape and other fantasies" (_qualche luntani et altra
      fantaxia_). Bellini, however, was by no means stagnant in his
      art, or in his outlook. At the end of his life, he undertook,
      as we have seen, a Bacchanal, and in his middle period he
      painted the beautiful little allegories now in the Academy at
      Venice. "Bellini," says Morelli, "was ever making progress. He
      knew how to adapt himself to his subject, and was, as occasion
      required, grand and serious, graceful and attractive, naïve and
      simple." It is in Venice that Bellini can be best studied; but
      our National Gallery is fortunate in having more of his works
      than can be seen in any other collection north of the Alps. And
      how varied are his powers! The same hand has given us subjects
      of intense religious conviction, like "The Agony in the Garden"
      (726) and "The Blood of the Redeemer" (1233); "sunny pictures
      of devotional sentiment" (280 and 599); the noble portrait here
      before us; and delicate landscape work, like the "Peter Martyr"
      (812). In his earliest pictures he devoted himself to the
      profoundest sentiments of Christianity--perhaps, as has been
      suggested, under the influence of S. Bernardino, then preaching
      at Padua (Roger Fry's _Giovanni Bellini_, p. 22). Afterwards
      the "note" in Bellini's work is rather "genial serenity." The
      expression of his Madonnas is often tender and solemn, but
      he never lets it pass into the region of the ecstatic. All
      is bright and peaceful and sunny. He belongs to what Ruskin
      calls "the age of the masters," in which the main object is
      "pictorial perfectness and deliciousness."

A magnificent portrait of one of the greatest men of the Venetian
Republic. Leonardo, the 67th Doge, held office from 1501 to 1521. He
belonged to one of the most ancient and noble families in the State,
and Venice, under his rule, was one of the Great Powers of Europe--as
the league of Cambrai formed against him sufficiently shows. There
is all the quiet dignity of a born ruler in his face--"fearless,
faithful, patient, impenetrable, implacable--every word a fate"
(_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. ix. § 1). In his capacity of
State painter to the Republic it was Bellini's duty to execute the
official portraits of the Doges. During his long life he saw no fewer
than eleven Doges, and was State painter during the reigns of four.
This, however, is the only portrait of a Doge by Bellini which has been
preserved (Richter's _Lectures on the National Gallery_, p. 42). It is
remarkable alike for strong characterisation, simplicity of conception,
and brilliancy of colouring.


190. A JEWISH RABBI.

  _Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See_ 45, and also under 51.


191. THE YOUTHFUL CHRIST AND ST. JOHN.

  _Guido_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). _See 11._

St. John is charming in the beauty of boyhood. In the youthful Christ
the painter has striven after something more "ideal," and has produced
a somewhat namby-pamby face.


192. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.

  _Gerard Dou_ (Dutch: 1613-1675).

      Dou, who stands at the head of the Leyden School, is
      remarkable for the patient industry which he devoted to his
      work, and which was rewarded by his attainment of wonderful
      mastery in delicate execution. "Mr. Slap-dash whips out his
      pocket-book, scribbles for five minutes on one page, and
      from that memorandum paints with the aid of the depths of
      his consciousness the whole of his picture. Not so the true
      follower of Gerard Dou. To him the silent surface with the
      white ground is a sacred place that is to tell on after ages,
      and bring pleasure or power or knowledge to hundreds of
      thousands as silently. No eyes, emperor's or clown's, telling
      the other that they have been there. It is worth this man's
      while to spend a whole sketch-book, if need be, over one
      twelve-inch panel" (_Letters of James Smetham_, p. 173). With
      Gerard Dou "a picture was a thing of orderly progression,
      even as the flowers of spring gradually unfold their leaves
      and buds and blossoms to the sun. He hurried his work for no
      man, but moved with a princely ease, as much as to say to the
      world, 'Other men may hurry as they please, from necessity or
      excitement; but Gerard Dou at least chooses to think, and to
      perfect his works until he has satisfied himself.'" At first
      he worked at portrait-painting, but his manner was too slow to
      please his sitters. "The wife of a wealthy burgomaster paid
      the penalty of possessing a fair white hand by having to sit
      five long days while the painter transferred it to canvas. Had
      his patrons come into the world for no other purpose than to
      serve Gerard Dou, he could not have dissipated their time with
      greater indifference. The cheek of his fair model would grow
      pale with hunger and fatigue while he was rounding a pearl on
      her neck" (968). Afterwards Dou devoted himself to scenes of
      indoor _genre_, and herein "he spent as much time in imitating
      an indentation on a copper stewpan as he devoted to a dimple
      in the refulgent cheek of beauty. Each object he transcribes
      is sharp or dull, transparent or opaque, rounded or squared,
      as it ought to be. The texture is always given with exactness,
      even to the minute threads in a costly robe. He paints goblets
      of wine which would tempt an ascetic. His gentlemen smoke
      such delicately moulded clay pipes with so much serenity that
      smoking in his pictures is invested with all the grace of an
      accomplishment. He carried his neatness and love of order into
      his studio. Other painters were content to sit at an easel of
      plain deal--Gerard Dou must have one of ebony, inlaid with
      mother-of-pearl. He locked up his colours in a costly cabinet
      as if they had been rubies, emeralds, and brilliants of the
      first water. On arriving in front of his easel, he is said
      to have paused for a few moments to allow the dust to settle
      before he uncovered the picture" (Merritt's _Art Criticism and
      Romance_, i. 170). The German painter Sandrart relates that he
      once visited Dou's studio and admired the great care bestowed
      by the artist on the painting of a broomstick. Dou remarked
      that he would still have to work at it for three days more. The
      history of his pictures is a remarkable instance of industry
      rewarded. In his lifetime an amateur of the name of Spiering
      used to pay him one thousand florins a year--in itself a good
      income--for the mere privilege of having the first offer of
      his pictures; and since his death their value has steadily
      increased. Of his life, beyond what has been stated above,
      little is known. He was the son of a glazier at Leyden, and was
      apprenticed successively to an engraver and a glass-painter.
      At the age of fifteen he entered the studio of Rembrandt, with
      whom he remained three years. He lived nearly all his life in
      his native town. Among his pupils were Schalcken (199), Mieris
      (840), and Metsu (838).

This fine portrait is painted (says Sir Edward Poynter) in a style
unusually large and free for the master.


193. LOT AND HIS DAUGHTERS LEAVING SODOM.

  _Guido_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). _See 11._

This and the companion picture (196) are interesting as being two of
the nation's conspicuously bad bargains. The purchase of them at very
high prices, £1680 and £1260, was indeed one of the grievances that
led to the Select Committee of the House of Commons, 1853, and to the
subsequent reconstitution of the Gallery. "Expert" witnesses declared
before the Committee that these two pictures ought not to have been
bought at any price or even accepted as a gift. Ruskin had some time
previously written to the _Times_ about them as follows:--

      "Sir, if the canvases of Guido, lately introduced into the
      Gallery, had been good works of even that bad master, which
      they are not,--if they had been genuine and untouched works,
      even though feeble, which they are not,--if, though false and
      retouched remnants of a feeble and fallen school, they had been
      endurably decent or elementarily instructive,--some conceivable
      excuse might perhaps have been by ingenuity forged, and by
      impudence uttered, for their introduction into a gallery where
      we previously possessed two good Guidos (11 and 177) ... but
      now, sir, what vestige of an apology remains for the cumbering
      our walls with pictures that have no single virtue, no colour,
      no drawing, no character, no history, no thought?" (_Arrows of
      the Chace_, i. 64, 65).


194. THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS.

  _Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See 38._

At the wedding of Thetis and Peleus an apple was thrown amongst the
guests by the Goddess of Discord, to be given to the most beautiful.
Paris, the Trojan shepherd, was ordered by Jupiter to decide the
contest. He is here seated with Mercury, the messenger of the gods,
at his side, about to award the apple to Venus. On the right of Venus
is Juno with her peacock at her feet; on the left, Minerva, with her
owl perched behind her. Paris thus chose Pleasure, instead of Power or
Wisdom; and from his choice came, the story adds, all the troubling
of domestic peace involved in the Trojan War. The Goddess of Discord,
already assured of her victory and its consequences, hovers in the
clouds above, spreading fire and pestilence.

This picture--one of Rubens's masterpieces and "evidently entirely
the work of his own hand"--belongs to his latest period; "never did
he show his intense appreciation of the beauty of flesh and the
delights of colour more conspicuously than in the pictures of his old
age." Characteristic also is the painter's treatment of the subject.
The goddesses are as substantial as any figures of flesh and blood;
the picture is realistic, not symbolic. An exactly opposite method
of treatment was exemplified in Mr. Watt's "Judgment of Paris,"
exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1887. Paris was left out, for
does not every lover have the same choice to make for himself? and the
goddesses were soft visionary forms of purely ideal beauty (_cf. Modern
Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. viii. § 7).


195. A MEDICAL PROFESSOR.

  _Unknown_ (German School).

The interest of this picture lies in the history of its purchase. It
was bought by the trustees in 1845, on the advice of the then Keeper,
as a Holbein. "The veriest tyro might well have been ashamed of such
a purchase" (_Arrows of the Chace_, i. 65); and very much ashamed
the trustees were, when immediately after the purchase the hoax was
discovered. There and then they subscribed £100 between them, which
they offered to M. Rochard, the dealer, "to induce him to annul the
bargain, but he declined, and there was an end of it."[108]


196. SUSANNAH AND THE ELDERS.

  _Guido Reni_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). _See 11._

"A work devoid alike of art and decency" (_Modern Painters_, vol.
ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. xiv. § 24). For the circumstances of its
acquisition see above under 193.


197. A WILD BOAR HUNT.

  _Velazquez_ (Spanish: 1599-1660).

      Don Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez was born at Seville of
      well-to-do parents--his father's name being Silva, his mother's
      Velazquez. His talent for drawing quickly showed itself, and
      when only twenty he married Juana, the daughter of his second
      master, Pacheco (his first being another painter of Seville,
      Herrera). Pacheco's house, says one of the Spanish historians,
      was "the golden prison of painting," and it was here that
      Velazquez met Cervantes, and obtained his first introduction
      to the brilliant circle in which he was himself to shine. In
      Pacheco's company he went in 1622 to Madrid, where he had
      influential friends, and next year he was invited to return
      by Olivares, the king's great minister. Olivares persuaded
      the king to sit to Velazquez for his portrait. The portrait
      was a complete success, and the painter stepped at once into
      fame and favour. This immediate success is characteristic of
      his extraordinary facility. "Just think," says Ruskin, "what
      is implied when a man of the enormous power and facility that
      Reynolds had, says he was 'trying to do with great labour'
      what Velazquez 'did at once.'" Velazquez shows indeed "the
      highest reach of technical perfection yet attained in art; all
      effort and labour seeming to cease in the radiant peace and
      simplicity of consummate human power"[109] (_Two Paths_, § 68;
      _Fors Clavigera_, 1876, p. 188). From the time of this first
      portrait of Philip IV. onwards, the life of Velazquez was one
      long triumph. He was not only the favourite but the friend of
      the king. He was made in succession painter to the king, keeper
      of the wardrobe, usher of the royal chamber, and chamberlain,
      and offices were also found for his friends and relations.
      He lived in the king's palace on terms of close intimacy,
      painting the king and his family in innumerable attitudes, and
      accompanying him on his royal progresses. When our Charles I.,
      then Prince of Wales, visited Madrid in 1623, Velazquez painted
      his portrait, and figured in all the royal fêtes held in the
      English prince's honour. The Duke of Buckingham, it would seem,
      was also his friend, and Velazquez saw much too of Rubens, when
      the latter came on his diplomatic mission to Madrid. Rubens
      advised Velazquez to visit Italy, and in 1630 the king gave
      his consent. He travelled with recommendations from the king,
      and wherever he went--Venice, Ferrara, Rome, Naples--he was
      received with all the honours accorded to princes. His second
      visit to Italy was in 1648, when the king sent him to buy
      pictures with the view of forming a Spanish Academy. At Rome he
      painted the portrait of the Pope (Innocent X.), which made so
      great a mark that it was carried in triumphal procession, like
      Cimabue's picture of old. His royal master, however, became
      impatient for his return, and he hurried back to Madrid, after
      giving commissions to all the leading artists then at Rome. On
      his return he was given fresh honours and offices--especially
      that of Marshal of the Court, whose duty it was to superintend
      the personal lodgment of the king during excursions. It was
      the duties of this office which were the immediate cause
      of his death. He accompanied the king to the conference at
      Irun--on the "Island of the Pheasants"--which led to the
      marriage of Louis XIV. with the Infanta Maria Teresa. There is
      a picture of him at Versailles by the French artist Lebrun,
      which was painted on this occasion. The portrait, sombre
      and cadaverous-looking, was no doubt true to life; and when
      Velazquez returned to Madrid, it was found that his exertions
      in arranging the royal journey had sown the seeds of a fever,
      from which after a week's illness he died. Seven days later his
      wife died of grief, and was buried at his side.

      Though Velazquez spent all his life, as we have seen, amongst
      the great ones of the earth, no trace of vanity or meanness
      is discernible in his character. Ruskin (_The Two Paths_,
      §§ 62, 65) connects his sweetness of disposition with the
      truthfulness which was characteristic of his art. "The art
      which is especially dedicated to natural fact always indicates
      a peculiar gentleness and tenderness of mind, and all great and
      successful work of that kind will assuredly be the production
      of thoughtful, sensitive, earnest, kind men, large in their
      views of life, and full of various intellectual power ... (One
      instance is Reynolds). The other painter whom I would give
      you as an instance of this gentleness is a man of another
      nation, on the whole I suppose one of the most cruel civilised
      nations in the world,--the Spaniards. They produced but one
      great painter, only one; but he among the very greatest of
      painters, Velazquez. You would not suppose, from looking at
      Velazquez's portraits generally, that he was an especially kind
      or good man; you perceive a peculiar sternness about them;
      for they were as true as steel, and the persons whom he had
      to paint being not generally kind or good people, they were
      stern in expression, and Velazquez gave the sternness; but he
      had precisely the same intense perception of truth, the same
      marvellous instinct for the rendering of all natural soul and
      all natural form that our Reynolds had. Let me, then, read you
      his character as it is given by Mr. Stirling (afterwards Sir
      W. Stirling-Maxwell): 'Certain charges, of what nature we are
      not informed, brought against him after his death, made it
      necessary for his executor to refute them at a private audience
      granted to him by the king for that purpose. After listening
      to the defence of his friend, Philip immediately made answer,
      "I can believe all you say of the excellent disposition of
      Diego Velazquez." Having lived for half his life in courts, he
      was yet capable both of gratitude and generosity.... No mean
      jealousy ever influenced his conduct to his brother artists; he
      could afford not only to acknowledge the merits, but to forgive
      the malice of his rivals. His character was of that rare and
      happy kind, in which high intellectual power is combined
      with indomitable strength of will, and a winning sweetness
      of temper.'" Nothing shows his character better than his
      treatment of Murillo, who came to Madrid, an unfriended youth,
      in 1640. Velazquez received him to his house, gave directions
      for his admission to all the galleries and for permission to
      copy, presented him to the king, procured him commissions, and
      offered him facilities for making the journey to Rome.

      The chief characteristics of Velazquez's art have been already
      incidentally alluded to. "Rejecting all influences," says Sir
      Frederick Burton, "alike native and foreign, and following
      nature alone, he succeeded in imitating the true appearances
      of things as seen through the atmosphere that surrounds them,
      with a fidelity that has never been matched. Whatever he
      undertook to paint, whether the human face and figure, other
      animals, or landscape scenery, the result in his hands was a
      presentment intensely individualised, and yet, at the same
      time, suggestive of the type." Some modern writers claim the
      work of Velazquez as "impressionism"--a much abused and a
      very ill-defined term. Certainly Velazquez, like every other
      great artist, painted his impressions. But his sheet-anchor
      was fidelity to fact; and as for his _technique_, it was
      only by constant observation and practice that he attained
      that lightness of hand, that felicity of touch, by which his
      later work is characterised. For a painting of the master's
      earliest period, see 1375. The truthfulness of Velazquez had
      its reward, says Ruskin, in making him distinguished also
      amongst all Spanish painters by the sparkling purity of his
      colour. "Colour is, more than all elements of art, the reward
      of veracity of purpose.... In giving an account of anything
      for its own sake, the most important points are those of form.
      Nevertheless, the form of the object is its own attribute;
      special, not shared with other things. An error in giving an
      account of it does not necessarily involve wider error. But
      its colour is partly its own, partly shared with other things
      round it. The hue and power of all broad sunlight is involved
      in the colour it has cast upon this single thing; to falsify
      that colour, is to misrepresent and break the harmony of the
      day: also, by what colour it bears, this single object is
      altering hues all round it; reflecting its own into them,
      displaying them by opposition, softening them by repetition;
      one falsehood in colour in one place, implies a thousand in
      the neighbourhood.... Hence the apparent anomaly that the only
      schools of colour are the schools of Realism.... Velazquez,
      the greatest colourist, is the most accurate portrait painter
      of Spain" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. xi. § 8
      _n._).[110] It is curious that the influence of Velazquez was
      in his own time and country comparatively circumscribed. He
      exercised no such overpowering attraction as that of Leonardo,
      or Raphael, or Michael Angelo. The real followers of Velazquez
      are painters of our own day, and more especially the French
      painters of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and
      their imitators in the other schools of Europe and America.

A very interesting picture, both for the sparkling brilliancy of its
execution and for the truth with which it reproduces the court life
of the time. Philip IV. was as fond of the chase as he was of the
arts; and here we see some state hunting-party in a royal enclosure
(such as was arranged, no doubt, for the pleasure of our Charles I.
when he visited Madrid), with an array of huntsmen and guards, and
magnificent carriages for the ladies of the court. "The king has just
thrown his _horquilla_ [a kind of pitchfork] into the flank of a boar
tearing furiously by.... Here the heroes of the day are very slightly
sketched, but we at once recognise Philip IV. from the few touches
suggesting his face; he keeps to the right, owing to the proximity
of the ladies, and by him stands Olivares as equerry-in-chief.... In
the second carriage is Queen Isabella. Occasionally the boars made
tremendous leaps; hence the ladies are also provided with pitchforks
to turn them aside. Moreover, two huntsmen with spears keep watch by
the Queen's coach. The groups of spectators deserve minute study.
They contain studies of costume and character enough for a scrap-book
of "Castilian Types of the Seventeenth Century." Thus, notice under
the tree on the right a peasant resting with elbows and chest on
the patient back of his beloved ass--verily, another Sancho Panza!
And those two rogues on the grass, one holding the water-jug to his
mouth, look like a sketch by Murillo. The mendicant, again, in the
brown cloak, both hands resting on his stick, is surely a privileged
speculator, who solemnly invites the rich folk to increase their stock
in the next world by entrusting their investments to him. Elsewhere is
a rider slashing at the hard flanks of his obstinate mule, while his
_escudero_ shoves from behind; two cavaliers paying each other formal
compliments; a group of experts in "dog-flesh" near the master of the
hounds, thronging round the fine boar-hound, who has been ripped up by
the quarry. Notice, too, the isolated group of cavaliers in grey and
scarlet cloaks, with the clergyman, perhaps the "chaplain to the hunt."
They stand apart from the scene, having more weighty matters on hand."
"The figures do not seem very numerous, as they are scattered about
without a trace of conventional grouping. Yet, even without the heads
that are merely suggested, there are over a hundred figures, some sixty
outside and fifty inside the central enclosure. Sir Edwin Landseer
declared that he had never seen so much large art on so small a scale"
(Justi's _Velazquez and his Times_, pp. 212-14). Notice especially the
two splendid dogs near the left-hand corner. Velazquez is very great in
painting dogs; he "has made some of them nearly as grand as his surly
kings" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 13).

With regard to the execution of the picture (which was bought in 1846
and was alleged to have been damaged in cleaning), Ruskin wrote:
"I have seldom met with an example of the master which gave me
more delight, or which I believed to be in more genuine or perfect
condition.... (The critic's) complaint of loss of substance in the
figures of the foreground is, I have no doubt, altogether groundless.
He has seen little southern scenery if he supposes that the brilliancy
and apparent nearness of the silver clouds is in the slightest degree
overcharged; and shows little appreciation of Velazquez in supposing
him to have sacrificed the solemnity and might of such a distance
to the inferior interest of the figures in the foreground.... The
position of the horizon suggests, and the _lateral_ extent of the
foreground _proves_, such a distance between the spectator and even
its nearest figures as may well justify the slightness of their
execution. Even granting that some of the upper glazings of the figures
had been removed, the tone of the whole picture is so light, grey,
and glittering, and the dependence on the power of its whites so
absolute, that I think the process hardly to be regretted which has
left these in lustre so precious, and restored to a brilliancy which a
comparison with any modern work of similar aim would render apparently
supernatural, the sparkling motion of its figures and the serene snow
of its sky"[111] (_Arrows of the Chace_, i. 58-60).


198. THE TEMPTATION OF ST. ANTHONY.

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

The legend of the temptation of St. Anthony, here realistically set
forth, is the story of the temptations that beset the ascetic. In
the wilderness, brooding over sin, he is tempted; it is only when he
returns to the world and goes about doing good that the temptations
cease to trouble him. St. Anthony lived, like Faust, the life of
a recluse and a visionary, and like him was tempted of the devil.
"Seeing that wicked suggestions availed not, Satan raised up in his
sight (again like Mephistopheles in _Faust_) the sensible images of
forbidden things. He clothed his demons in human forms; they hovered
round him in the shape of beautiful women, who, with the softest
blandishments, allured him to sin." The saint in his distress resolved
to flee yet farther from the world; but it is not so that evil can
be conquered, and still "spirits in hideous forms pressed round him
in crowds, scourged him and tore him with their talons--all shapes
of horror, 'worse than fancy ever feigned or fear conceived,' came
roaring, howling, hissing, shrieking in his ears." In the midst of all
this terror a vision of help from on high shone upon him; the evil
phantoms vanished, and he arose unhurt and strong to endure. But it is
characteristic of the love of horror in the Bolognese School that in
Carracci's picture the celestial vision does not dissolve the terrors.


199. LESBIA AND HER SPARROW.

  _Godfried Schalcken_ (Dutch: 1643-1706).

      Schalcken was probably a pupil of Gerard Dou (see 192), whose
      delicate finish he sought to rival. "But the smooth, polished
      surface of his works is unpleasant, and the labour bestowed
      upon them is too obvious" (Burton). He spent the greater part
      of his life at Dort, but he was employed for some time in
      England by King William III. In addition to his _genre_ pieces,
      Schalcken painted numerous portraits, and also attempted sacred
      subjects. He especially excelled in pictures of candle-light.

A picture in illustration of a Latin poem, as befits a painter whose
father was headmaster of a Latin school (at Dort). Lesbia is weighing
jewels against her sparrow, which she loved better even than her own
eyes--

    Mourn, every Venus, every Love!
      Gallants gay, mourn every one!
    My darling had a favourite dove,
      That she did prize
      As her own eyes--
    Her dove is dead and gone.

  G. R., from _Catullus_, iii.


200. THE MADONNA IN PRAYER.

  _Sassoferrato_ (Eclectic: 1605-1685).

      Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato from his
      birthplace, not far from Urbino, is generally described as a
      follower of the Carracci, but he seems to have been chiefly
      a copyist of Raphael, Perugino, and other early masters.
      Compare Sassoferrato's Madonnas with the earlier models, and
      the distinction between sentimentality and sentiment becomes
      plain. His works are, however, marked by real feeling, and he
      maintained a certain elevation of style.


202. DOMESTIC POULTRY

  _Melchior de Hondecoeter_ (Dutch: 1636-1695).

      This painter, a member of a noble family of Brabant, devoted
      himself to the poultry-yard, and became famous for his pictures
      of fowl and other birds. His compositions show a constant study
      of the subjects he treats. He studied first under his father,
      Gysbert de Hondecoeter, and afterwards under his uncle, Jan
      Baptist Weenix (1096).

"A beautiful brood of young chickens in the foreground. The cock was
Hondecoeter's favourite bird, which he is said to have taught to stand
to him in a fixed position as a model." (Official Catalogue).


203. CONVENTUAL CHARITY.

  _William van Herp_ (Flemish: 1614-1677).

      Works by W. Van Herp, a member of the Painters' Guild at
      Antwerp, are not numerous. They show the influence of Rubens
      and also of Jordaens, the two leaders of the Flemish School at
      his time.

Franciscan friars are distributing food to the poor at the gate of a
convent.


204. DUTCH SHIPPING.

  _Bakhuizen_ (Dutch: 1631-1708).

      Ludolf Bakhuizen comes second in the succession of Dutch
      sea painters to W. van de Velde, and the reader is referred
      to the remarks on that painter (see under 149) for the
      general characteristics of them both. Whereas, however, Van
      de Velde preferred calms, Bakhuizen preferred storms, and
      even "voluntarily exposed his life several times," says a
      compatriot, "for the sake of seizing, in all its horrible
      reality, the effects of rough weather" (Havard: _The Dutch
      School_, p. 255). It cannot be said, however, that the result
      was very successful. There is, adds the same critic, a hardness
      about his forms and a want of transparency in his colours
      "which cannot be counterbalanced by the fury of upheaved
      waves or the furious driving of the heavy clouds across the
      sky." Bakhuizen, before he took to painting, was successively
      a book-keeper (his father was town-clerk of Emden) and a
      writing-master. Perhaps it is to his experience in the latter
      capacity that the hardness and "peruke-like" regularity of
      his waves are due. In his own day, however, his sea-pieces
      were very greatly esteemed. The King of Prussia was among his
      patrons, and the Tzar, Peter the Great, frequently visited his
      studios, and even himself took lessons of him. He made many
      constructive drawings of ships for that monarch. He was also
      an etcher, and the British Museum possesses a fragment of a
      sketch-book of his.


205. ITINERANT MUSICIANS.

  _J. W. E. Dietrich_ (German: 1712-1774).

      Johann Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich was born at Weimar, where his
      father was court-painter. So precocious was his talent that
      when only in his eighteenth year he was himself appointed
      court-painter to Augustus II., King of Poland and Elector of
      Saxony. In 1743 he went to Italy, and after this visit he
      turned his name into Italian by signing it Dietrici (as in the
      picture dated 1745). He was afterwards appointed keeper of the
      celebrated Gallery at Dresden, a Professor of the Academy
      there, and Director of the school of painting attached to the
      porcelain manufactory. His pictures and etchings are numerous.
      In his original work his style remained German. But he had also
      a remarkable facility in imitating the works of other painters.
      "He did more," says Merritt, the picture-restorer, "to confound
      collectors than all other imitators put together. Hundreds
      of his imitations of the various masters have been sold to
      second-rate amateurs for original productions" (_Art Criticism
      and Romance_, i. 164).


206. THE HEAD OF A GIRL.

  _Jean Baptiste Greuze_ (French: 1725-1805).

      To understand the great reputation which Greuze enjoyed in his
      day one should remember, besides the prettiness of his pictures
      in themselves, the contrast which they afforded in their
      subject-matter to the art around them. Look, for instance,
      at 1090 and 101-104. Those pictures are nearly contemporary
      with Greuze's, and are typical, the first of the mythology,
      the latter of the courtliness, and all of the sensuality, of
      the current art of the time. The return to nature, the return
      to simpler life and sounder morals, which inspired Rousseau,
      found expression in Greuze's domestic scenes and sweet girl
      faces. "Courage, my good Greuze," said Diderot of one of
      Greuze's pictures of domestic drama; "introduce morality into
      painting. What, has not the pencil been long enough and too
      long consecrated to debauchery and vice? Ought we not to be
      delighted at seeing it at last unite with dramatic poetry in
      instructing us, correcting us, inviting us to virtue?"[112]
      Greuze's art, in comparison with what was around it, was thus
      simple, natural, moral. Yet one sees now that something of
      the artificiality, against which his pictures were a protest,
      nevertheless affected them. For instance there is an obvious
      posing in this picture, just as there is a touch of affectation
      in 1154. Decidedly, too, Greuze "invests his lessons of
      bourgeois morality with sensuous attractions." There is neither
      the innocence nor the unconsciousness in the girls of Greuze
      that there is in those of Reynolds or Millais.

      The life of Greuze is interesting for the curious instance it
      affords of the inability, which so many eminent men have shown,
      to know in what direction their best powers lay. Greuze's
      reputation rested on his _genre_ painting--on his rendering of
      domestic scenes or faces; but his ambition was to figure as
      an historical painter. His one picture in this style--"Severus
      and Caracalla" (in the Louvre)--was painted in 1769 as his
      diploma work for the French Academy. They praised him for
      "his former productions, which were excellent," and not for
      "this one, which was unworthy alike of them and of him," and
      admitted him as a painter in the class of _genre_ only. Greuze,
      who was vain and overbearing in the days of his vogue, was
      greatly incensed and ceased to exhibit at the Academy until
      after the Revolution. But his power had then begun to fail;
      the classic school reigned supreme; and Greuze, who had been
      unhappily married, and whose large earnings were squandered by
      extravagance and bad management, died in great poverty. He was
      born in Burgundy, of humble middle-class parents, in the little
      town of Tournus, where his modest birthplace may still be seen.
      His happiest productions were taken from the daily life of the
      middle-classes, and his sweet girl faces are unique in French
      art (Lady Dilke's article in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, and
      Morley's _Diderot_, vol. ii. chap. iii.).

Campbell's "Lines on a picture of a girl by Greuze" may be quoted of
this picture:--

    What wert thou, maid?--thy life--thy name
      Oblivion hides in mystery;
    Though from thy face my heart could frame
      A long romantic history.

    Transported to thy time I seem,
      Though dust thy coffin covers--
    And hear the songs, in fancy's dream,
      Of thy devoted lovers.

    How witching must have been thy breath--
      How sweet the living charmer--
    Whose every semblance after death
      Can make the heart grow warmer!


207. THE IDLE SERVANT.

  _Nicolas Maes_ (Dutch: 1632-1693). _See_ 153.

In the background is the family at dinner. The waiting-maid comes to
the kitchen to serve the next course--the duckling, perhaps, which
a cat is stealing--and finds the cook of Sancho Panza's philosophy:
"Blessings on him who invented sleep, ... the food that appeases
hunger, the drink that quenches thirst, ... the balance that equals the
simple with the wise." Signed and dated 1655.


208. THE FINDING OF MOSES.

  _Bartholomew Breenbergh_ (Dutch: 1599-1659).

      Breenbergh, after visiting Italy, established himself in
      France, where, after the example of Poussin and Claude, he
      painted "classical landscapes," into which he introduced small
      figures, supposed to represent scenes from Holy Writ, etc.
      His work was in great request in France, and several of his
      pictures are now in the Louvre.


209. THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS.

  _Both_ and _Poelenburgh_ (Dutch). _See under_ 71 and 955.

The landscape by Both, the figures by Poelenburgh. For the subject of
the judgment of Paris, see under 194.


210. VENICE: THE PIAZZA DI SAN MARCO.

  _Francesco Guardi_ (Venetian: 1712-1793).

      Francesco Guardi was a scholar and imitator of Canaletto. "Less
      prized during the heyday of his master's fame, he has been
      steadily acquiring reputation on account of certain qualities
      peculiar to himself. His draughtsmanship displays an agreeable
      stateliness; his colouring a graceful gemmy brightness and
      a glow of sunny gold. But what has mainly served to win for
      Guardi popularity, is the attention he paid to contemporary
      costume and manners. Canaletto filled large canvases with
      mathematical perspectives of city and water. At the same time
      he omitted life and incident. There is little to remind us that
      the Venice he so laboriously depicted was the Venice of perukes
      and bagwigs, of masks and hoops and carnival disguises. Guardi
      had an eye for local colour and for fashionable humours" (J. A.
      Symonds, "Pietro Longhi," in the _Century Guild Hobby Horse_,
      April 1889).

Notice the effect of light on the Church of St. Mark at the end of the
square: "Beyond those troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out
of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in
a kind of awe, that we may see it far away;--a multitude of pillars
and white domes, clustered into a long low pyramid of coloured light"
(_Stones of Venice_, vol. ii. ch. iv. § 14).


211. A BATTLE-PIECE.

  _Johan van Huchtenburgh_ (Dutch: 1646-1733).

      Huchtenburgh was in great request as a battle-painter, and in
      1708 was commissioned by Prince Eugene to paint the victories
      won by that prince and the Duke of Marlborough over the French.


212. A MERCHANT AND HIS CLERK.

  _Thomas de Keyser_ (Dutch: 1596-1667).

      This painter--the son of an eminent sculptor and architect--was
      born at Amsterdam, and was one of the chief forerunners of
      Rembrandt in the art of portrait painting. "If," says Burton,
      "in some of his work remains of the formality and stiffness
      of the sixteenth century may be traced, the greater number
      show a freedom and a sense of life unusual among those of his
      predecessors."

This picture--which is signed (on the mantelpiece) and dated 1627--is
interesting as showing us, in a particular instance, the condition of
social and political life out of which the Dutch art of the seventeenth
century arose. The merchant has his globes before him: he was one of
those who had built up the riches of his country by foreign trade. But
he is a man of taste as well as of business, and the two things are
closely united.[113] His office is itself hung with rich tapestry, and
amongst the implements of his trade, his plans and books and maps, is
a guitar. "The United Provinces, grouped together by the Convention
of Utrecht (1579), ... concentrated the public functions in the hands
of an aristocratic middle class (such as we see them in Terburg's
historical picture, 896), educated and powerful, eager for science and
riches, bold enough to undertake everything, and persevering enough
to carry their enterprises to a successful conclusion. The brilliant
heroism, implacable will, and indefatigable perseverance which had
aided the people to recover their liberty and autonomy were now
directed to other objects.... Their shipbuilders covered the seas with
vessels, a legion of adventurous sailors went forth in all directions
to discover distant shores or to conquer unknown continents.... Gold
was now to be found in plenty in the country which hitherto had been
poor, and with the influx of riches, taste, luxury, appreciation of the
beautiful and love of Art were developed" (Havard: _The Dutch School_,
p. 62).


213. THE VISION OF A KNIGHT.

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

      This picture--with the original pen-and-ink drawing from which
      it was traced[114]--is the earliest known work of Raphael,
      painted when he was not more than seventeen and was "pluming
      his wings and meditating a flight." His first (or as it is
      commonly called, "Perugian") period may be divided into two:
      (1) Down to about 1500, before he went to Perugia, and whilst
      he was still studying at Urbino under Timoteo Viti; (2) From
      1500-1504, at Perugia. This picture probably belongs to the
      former of these periods. It is unlike Perugino in several
      respects--in the landscape, for instance, and in the broad hand
      of the sleeping knight, whereas Perugino's hands are narrower
      and longer. In connection, too, with Raphael's early pupilage
      under a Ferrarese master, note that the figure of Duty is
      like Francia's saint in No. 638 (see further on this subject
      Morelli's _Italian Pictures in German Galleries_, pp. 285-340).
      The picture, which was at one time in the possession of Sir
      Thomas Lawrence, came to England from the Borghese Gallery at
      Rome. It was originally in the Ducal Palace at Urbino. "The
      subject breathes the very essence of that courtly and romantic
      atmosphere which haunted the palace of Urbino and may well
      have been inspired by the Duchess Elizabeth herself. This
      accomplished lady was the first to honour the son of her old
      friend Giovanni Santi with her patronage, and Raphael may have
      painted this little allegory for the decoration of her chamber,
      just as Costa and Mantegna painted their picture of Parnassus
      and the Muses for Isabella d'Este's grotto at Mantua" (Julia
      Cartwright: _Early Work of Raphael_, p. 12).

A young knight sleeps under a laurel--the tree whose leaves were in all
ages the reward of honour; and in a dream of his future career he sees
two figures approach him, between whom he has to make his choice. The
one on the left speaks with the voice of Duty; she is purple-robed and
offers him a book and a sword--emblematic of the active life of study
and conflict. The other is of fair countenance and is gaily decked
with ribbons and strings of coral. Hers is the voice of Pleasure, and
the flower she offers is a sprig of myrtle in bloom--"myrtle dear to
Venus." Raphael was thinking, perhaps, of the Greek story which told
of the choice of Hercules. For Hercules, when he came to man's estate,
laid him down to rest and pondered which road in life to take; and
lo! there stood by him two women. And one of them took up her parable
and said: "O Hercules, if thou wouldst choose the smoothest and the
pleasantest path, then shouldst thou follow me." And Hercules said:
"O lady, I pray thee tell me thy name." And she answered: "Those who
love me call me Pleasure, and those who hate me call me Evil." Then the
other woman came forward and said: "O Hercules, there is no road to
happiness except through toil and trouble; such is the gods' decree,
and if thou wouldst be happy in thy life and honoured in thy death,
then up and follow me." And her name was Duty. And Hercules chose the
better part, and went about the world redressing human wrong, and was
reverenced by men and honoured by the gods--

    Choose well; your choice is
    Brief, and yet endless.
    Here eyes do regard you
    In Eternity's stillness;
    Here is all fulness,
    Ye brave, to reward you.
    Work, and despair not!

  GOETHE, tr. by Carlyle (_Past and Present_).


214. CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.

  _Guido_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). _See_ 11.

In pictures of this subject two distinct conceptions may be noticed.
In some the coronation of the Virgin is, as it were, dramatic; the
subject is represented, that is to say, as the closing act in the life
of the Virgin, and saints and disciples appear in the foreground as
witnesses on earth of her coronation in heaven. No. 1155 is a good
instance of that treatment. This picture, on the other hand, shows the
mystical treatment of the subject--the coronation of the Virgin being
the accepted type of the Church triumphant. The scene is laid entirely
in heaven, and the only actors are the angels of the heavenly host.
Notice the carefully symmetrical arrangement of the whole composition,
as well as the charming faces of many of the angel chorus.


215, 216. VARIOUS SAINTS.[115]

  _School of Taddeo Gaddi_ (Florentine: 1300-1366).
  _See also_ (p. xix)

      Taddeo Gaddi was the godson and pupil of Giotto, with whom he
      lived twenty-four years, and whose tradition he faithfully
      carried on: art had "gone back," he used to say, "since his
      master's death." His most extensive works were the frescoes
      in the Spanish Chapel in Santa Maria Novella (described in
      ch. iv. of Ruskin's _Mornings in Florence_). Taddeo was also
      distinguished as an architect. "He built the Ponte Vecchio, and
      the old stones of it were so laid by him that they are unshaken
      to this day."

There is an air of settled peace, of abstract quietude, about this
company of saints which is very impressive--something fixed in the
attitude and features recalling the conventual life as described by St.
Bernard and paraphrased by Wordsworth in his _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_--


    Here Man more purely lives, less oft doth fall,
    More promptly rises, walks with stricter heed,
    More safely rests, dies happier, is freed
    Earlier from cleansing fires, and gains withal
    A brighter crown.


218. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

  _Ascribed to Peruzzi_ (Sienese: 1481-1536).

      Baldassare Peruzzi, an excellent draughtsman and fair painter,
      was most distinguished as an architect. His life, says Sir
      Edward Poynter, was one which any artist might envy. "Brought
      up at his own wish as a painter at Siena, he soon gave
      evidence of such talent that he was entrusted with important
      commissions at Rome, making acquaintance by this means with one
      of the great Roman patrons of art, Agostino Chigi, the same
      for whom Raphael painted a chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo.
      Baldassare found leisure to devote himself to the study of
      architecture; from this time he seems to have had almost the
      happiest lot that one can imagine falling to an artist, that
      of building palaces and decorating them with his own hand"
      (_Lectures on Art_, ch. viii.). Among these were the Farnesina
      Palace for Agostino Chigi, and the Palazzo Massimi, which is
      "justly considered one of the most beautiful and ingeniously
      constructed in Rome." It is characteristic of the taste of the
      time that what Vasari most admired in Peruzzi's buildings was
      "the decoration of the Loggia at the Villa Farnesina, painted
      in perspective to imitate stucco work." "This is done so
      perfectly," he says, "with the colours, that even experienced
      artists have taken them to be works in relief. I remember that
      Titian, a most excellent and renowned painter, whom I conducted
      to see these works, could by no means be persuaded that they
      were painted, and remained in astonishment when, on changing
      his point of view, he perceived that they were so." Baldassare
      also designed the fortifications of Siena, and on the death
      of Raphael was appointed architect of St. Peter's at Rome.
      His life was not free from adventures. At the sack of Rome
      in 1527 he was plundered of all he possessed by the Imperial
      soldiers, and was forced to paint a picture of their general,
      the Constable Bourbon, who had been killed in the assault of
      the city. He died at Rome, not without suspicion of having been
      poisoned, and was buried in the Pantheon, near the tomb of
      Raphael.

There is a drawing by Peruzzi of this subject in possession of the
National Gallery, No. 167. Girolamo da Treviso (623) made a copy of
it, which is perhaps this work. The figures of the three magi are
interesting as having been portraits of Titian, Raphael, and Michael
Angelo.


219. THE DEAD CHRIST.

  _Unknown_ (Lombard School, 16th century).

Perhaps to be ascribed to Bazzi (see under 1144).


221. HIS OWN PORTRAIT.

  =Rembrandt= (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See_ 45.

Compare No. 672. That was painted when he was about thirty; this,
some thirty years later. We see here the same features, though worn
by age; the same self-reliant expression, though broken down by
care. "In manner," says Sir Walter Armstrong, "it is amazingly free,
irresponsible, and what in any one but a stupendous master we should
call careless. It looks as though he had taken up the first dirty
palette on which he could lay his hands, and set himself to the making
of a picture with no further thought. To those who put signs of mastery
above all other qualities, it is one of the most attractive pictures in
the whole Gallery" (_Portfolio_, September 1891).


222. A MAN'S PORTRAIT (dated 1433).

  _Jan van Eyck_ (Early Flemish: about 1390-1440). _See_ 186.
  _See also_ (p. xxi)

One of Van Eyck's obviously truthful portraits, so highly finished that
the single hairs on the shaven chin are given. On the upper part of the
frame is the inscription, "Als ich kan"--as I can, the first words of
an old Flemish proverb, "As I can, but not as I will,"--an inscription
beautifully illustrative of a great man's modesty; accurately true
also as a piece of criticism. No pictures are more finished than Van
Eyck's, yet they are only "as he can," not as he would. "Let all the
ingenuity and all the art of the human race he brought to bear upon the
attainment of the utmost possible finish, and they could not do what
is done in the foot of a fly, or the film of a bubble. God alone can
finish; and the more intelligent the human mind becomes, the more the
infiniteness of interval is felt between human and divine work in this
respect" (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt iv. ch. ix. § 5).


223. DUTCH SHIPPING.

  _Bakhuizen_ (Dutch: 1631-1708). _See_ 204.


224. THE TRIBUTE MONEY.

  _School of Titian. See under_ 4.

The Pharisee, hoping to entrap Jesus into sedition, asks him whether
it is lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar. "Show me _the tribute money_"
is the answer. "Whose is this image and superscription?... Render unto
Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are
God's." Titian's great picture of this subject (painted about 1514) is
at Dresden.


225. BEATIFIC VISION OF THE MAGDALEN.

  _Giulio Romano_ (Roman: 1498-1546). _See_ 624.

A semicircular fresco (formerly in the church of the Trinita de' Monti,
Rome), showing the Magdalen borne upwards by angels to witness the joys
of the blessed.


226. VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH ST. JOHN AND ANGELS.

  _School of Botticelli_ (1447-1510). _See_ 1034.

This is a copy of a picture by Botticelli in the Rospigliosi Palace at
Rome. In the background is a hedge of roses, Botticelli's favourite
flower. "No man has ever yet drawn, and none is likely to draw for
many a day, roses as well as Sandro has drawn them" (_Fors Clavigera_,
1872, xii. 2). And he painted them, just as he painted his Madonnas,
from life, and from everyday life--for even as late as forty years ago,
Florence was "yet encircled by a wilderness of wild rose." It should be
noticed, further, that there was a constant Biblical reference in the
flowers which the painters consecrated to their Madonnas--especially
the rose, the emblem of love and beauty. The background in Madonna
pictures is frequently, as here, a piece of garden trellis: "a garden
enclosed is my sister, my spouse" (Song of Solomon, iv. 12).


227. ST. JEROME IN THE DESERT.

  _Florentine School_ (15th century).
  _See also_ (p. xix)

      Kneeling below are Girolamo Rucellai and his son. The arms of
      the Rucellai family are at each end of the _predella_. The
      picture was originally an altar-piece in the Rucellai Chapel
      in the church of the Eremiti di San Girolamo at Fiesole.
      Formerly ascribed to Cosimo Rosselli, the picture is now
      conjecturally attributed to Botticini (for whom see under 1126).

St. Jerome (A.D. 342-420) who first made the great Eastern book, the
Bible, legible in the West, by translating the Hebrew into Latin, was
one of the chief saints of the Latin or Western Church, and was a
favourite subject in Christian art; there are a dozen pictures of him
in the National Gallery alone. One of the chief events in his life
is told in the left-hand compartment at the bottom of this picture.
Jerome is tending a sick lion, and in all the pictures of him a lion
appears as his constant companion. The story is that one evening a lion
entered the monastery, limping as in pain, and all the brethren fled in
terror, as we see one of them doing here, whilst the others are looking
on safely behind a door; but Jerome went forward to meet the lion,
as though he had been a guest. And the lion lifted up his paw, and
Jerome, finding it was wounded by a thorn, tended the wild creature,
which henceforward became his constant companion and friend. What did
the Christian painters mean by their fond insistence on the constancy
of the lion-friend? They meant to foretell a day "when the Fear of Man
shall be laid in benediction, not enmity, on inferior beings,--when
they shall not hurt or destroy in all the holy Mountain, and the Peace
of the Earth shall be as far removed from its present sorrow, as the
present gloriously animate universe from the nascent desert, whose
deeps were the place of dragons, and its mountains, domes of fire. Of
that day knoweth no man; but the Kingdom of God is already come to
those who have tamed in their own hearts what was rampant of the lower
nature, and have learned to cherish what is lovely and human, in the
wandering children of the clouds and fields" (_Bible of Amiens_, ch.
iii. § 54). The other compartments depict incidents in the lives of St.
Damasus, St. Eusebius, St. Paula, and St. Eustache--saints associated
with St. Jerome. The picture itself shows an earlier period of his
life, when, before he settled in a monastery, but after a life of
pleasure in Rome, he left (as he himself tells us) not only parents and
kindred, but the accustomed luxuries of delicate life, and lived for
ten years in the desert in the effort to obtain some closer knowledge
of the Being and Will of God. The saints who are made by the painter to
keep St. Jerome company below are in sorrow; the angels above, in joy.
The other kneeling figures are portraits of the patron for whom the
picture was painted.


228. CHRIST AND THE MONEY-CHANGERS.

  _Bassano_ (Venetian: 1510-1592). _See_ 173.

Christ is driving out from the House of Prayer all those who had made
it a den of thieves--money-changers, dealers in cattle, sheep, goats,
birds, etc. A subject which lent itself conveniently to Bassano's
characteristic _genre_ style.


230. A FRANCISCAN MONK.

  _Francisco Zurbaran_ (Spanish: 1598-1662).

      Zurbaran--the contemporary of Velazquez--unites in a
      typical manner the two main characteristics of the Spanish
      School--asceticism in subject, realism in presentment. He
      is, says Stirling-Maxwell, the peculiar painter of monks, as
      Raphael is of Madonnas, and Ribera of martyrdoms; he studied
      the Spanish friar, and painted him with as high a relish as
      Titian painted the Venetian noble, and Vandyck the gentleman of
      England. In the Museum of Seville are several pictures which he
      painted for the Carthusians of that city. "The venerable friars
      seem portraits; each differs in feature from the other, yet all
      bear the impress of long years of solitary and silent penance;
      their white draperies chill the eye, as their cold hopeless
      faces chill the heart; and the whole scene is brought before
      us with a vivid fidelity, which shows that Zurbaran studied
      the Carthusian in his native cloisters with the like close and
      faithful attention that Velazquez bestowed on the courtier,
      strutting it in the corridors of the Alcazar or the alleys
      of Aranjuez" (_Annals of the Artists of Spain_, ch. xi.).
      Zurbaran was the son of a peasant, but having shown an early
      talent for drawing was released from the plough and sent to the
      studio of the painter-priest Juan de Roelas, at Seville. His
      abilities and his close study of nature soon gained him a high
      reputation; his forcible naturalistic style acquired for him
      the name of "the Caravaggio of Spain." He was employed in the
      cathedral of Seville, which remained his abode for the greater
      part of his life. In his picture of "St. Thomas Aquinas" in
      the museum there, the dark wild face, immediately behind the
      Imperial adorer, is traditionally held to be the portrait of
      Zurbaran himself. His habits were those of the recluse, but
      in 1650 he was, through the influence of Velazquez, called
      to Madrid. There he was set to a task little suited to his
      tastes--the production of a series of pictures (now in the
      Prado) to illustrate the labours of Hercules. Philip IV. used,
      we are told, to visit the artist whilst engaged on these
      pictures, and on one occasion expressed his admiration of his
      powers by laying his hand on his shoulder, and calling him
      "painter of the King, and king of the painters." "His best
      characteristic," says Burton, "is his power of imparting the
      sense of life to the heads of his figures. He was in fact a
      great, though not a professed, portrait painter."

It is a transcript from the religious life around him that Zurbaran
here sets before us. Seville was the most orthodox city in the most
Catholic country--at every corner of the streets there were Franciscan
monks, with prayers or charms to sell in exchange for food or money.
"For centuries in Spain country people bought up the monks' old garbs,
to use them in dressing the dead, so that St. Peter might pass them
into heaven thinking they were Franciscans." It was in the streets and
convents of Seville therefore that Zurbaran found his models. This
picture was bought for the National Gallery from the Louis Philippe
sale in 1853. When the gallery of Spanish pictures to which it formerly
belonged was inaugurated in the Louvre, "what remained most strongly
in the Parisian mind, so impressionable and so _blasé_, was not the
suavity of Murillo, nor the astonishing pencil of Velazquez, making
the canvas speak and palpitate with life; it was a certain 'Monk in
prayer' of Zurbaran, which it was impossible to forget, even if one
had seen it only once" (C. Blanc, cited in W. B. Scott's _Murillo_,
p. 55). "Of his gloomy monastic studies," says Stirling-Maxwell, "the
kneeling Franciscan holding a skull is one of the ablest; the face,
dimly seen beneath the brown hood, is turned to heaven; no trace of
earthly expression is left on its pale features, but the wild eyes seem
fixed on some dismal vision; and a single glance at the canvas imprints
the figure on the memory for ever."


232. THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.

  _Francisco Zurbaran_ (Spanish: 1598-1662). _See_ 230.

A characteristic and fine example of the naturalistic treatment of
such subjects by the Spanish School; formerly supposed to be an
early work of Velazquez, now attributed by the authorities of the
Gallery, following M. de Beruete, to Zurbaran.[116] The affinity of
the Spanish School in this respect to the Italian naturalists may be
seen by a glance at No. 172 in the late Italian Room. In the distance
is the guiding angel as the star of the Epiphany. It is a pretty
piece of observation of child nature that makes the painter show the
boy offering his animals to the infant Christ. One remembers George
Eliot's "young Daniel" (in _Scenes of Clerical Life_), who says to Mr.
Gilfil, by way of making friends, "We've got two pups, shall I show
'em yer? One's got white spots." Zurbaran was noted for his successful
delineation of animals. Palomino mentions with approbation his picture
of an enraged dog from which chance observers used to run away, and of
a yearling lamb, deemed by the possessor of more value than a hecatomb
of full-grown sheep.


234. A WARRIOR ADORING THE INFANT CHRIST.

  _Catena_ (Venetian: died 1531).

      Of Vincenzo di Biagio, commonly called Catena (possibly from a
      partiality for jewellery), little is known, and until recently
      little was heard. Modern critics have, however, decided that
      he was one of the ablest of the School of Bellini, and have
      attributed to him many beautiful works, which have hitherto
      borne famous names.[117] He was born at Treviso; his first
      master was probably the elder Girolamo da Treviso, but he
      must have finished his artistic education in the School of
      Bellini. Signed pictures from his hand are to be found in
      several of the Venetian churches and elsewhere. He was fond of
      introducing a partridge (as here and in 694) and a white poodle
      dog (as here) into his pictures, by which they may often be
      recognised. An altar-piece, representing S. Cristina in the
      church of S. Maria Mater Domini, and another of S. Giustina in
      S. Simpliciana are referred to as offering marked analogies
      with the work now before us. A letter is extant, dated April
      11, 1520, when Raphael was just deceased and Michelangelo
      infirm, in which Catena is recommended to be on his guard,
      "since danger seems to be impending over all very excellent
      painters." He was famous for his portraits; the portrait of
      Count Raimund Fugger, specially praised by Vasari, is now at
      Berlin. He died in 1531, in which year he made a will leaving
      legacies to a number of poor painters, and the greater part
      of his substance to the Guild of his art. In his later works
      the influence of Giorgione is strongly marked--as here in the
      rich full colour of the Kneeling Knight, and in other respects.
      "Giorgione," says Mr. Berenson, "created a demand which other
      painters were forced to supply. One of them, turning toward the
      new in a way that is full of singular charm, gave his later
      works all the beauty and softness of the first spring days in
      Italy. Upon hearing the title of one of Catena's works in the
      National Gallery, _A Warrior Adoring the Infant Christ_, who
      could imagine what a treat the picture itself had in store
      for him? It is a fragrant summer landscape enjoyed by a few
      quiet people, one of whom, in armour, with the glamour of the
      Orient about him, kneels at the Virgin's feet, while a romantic
      young page holds his horse's bridle. A good instance of the
      Giorgionesque way of treating a subject; not for the story, nor
      for the display of skill, nor for the obvious feeling, but for
      the lovely landscape, for the effects of light and colour, and
      for the sweetness of human relations" (_The Venetian Painters
      of the Renaissance_, p. 31).

Observe, for the technical merits of this picture, the horse-bridle:
"An example of true painter's work in minor detail; unsurpassable,
but not, by patience and modesty, inimitable" (_Academy Notes_, 1875,
p. 48). As for the subject, the warrior portrayed is nameless. This
is suggestive; it is not a peculiar picture, it is a type of what was
the common method of Venetian portraiture. "An English gentleman,
desiring his portrait, gives probably to the painter a choice of
several actions, in any of which he is willing to be represented.
As for instance, riding his best horse, shooting with his favourite
pointer, manifesting himself in his robes of state on some great
public occasion, meditating in his study, playing with his children,
or visiting his tenants; in any of these or other such circumstances,
he will give the artist free leave to paint him. But in one important
action he would shrink even from the suggestion of being drawn. He will
assuredly not let himself be painted praying. Strangely, this is the
action which, of all others, a Venetian desires to be painted in. If
they want a noble and complete portrait, they nearly all choose to be
painted on their knees" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iii.
§ 15). Notice also the little dog in the corner--"one of the little
curly, short-nosed, fringy-pawed things which all Venetian ladies
petted." "The dog is thus constantly introduced by the Venetians (in
Madonna pictures) in order to give the fullest contrast to the highest
tones of human thought and feeling.... But they saw the noble qualities
of the dog too--all his patience, love, and faithfulness ...," and
introduced him into their sacred pictures partly therefore in order
to show that "all the lower creatures, who can love, have passed,
through their love, into the guardianship and guidance of angels"
(_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iii. § 21, ch. vi. § 14; _Fors
Clavigera_, 1877, p. 31).[118]


235. THE DEAD CHRIST.

  _Giuseppe Ribera, called Spagnoletto_ (Spanish: 1598-1648).

      Ribera is a leading artist amongst what are called the
      _Naturalisti_ or _Tenebrosi_ (an alternative title, curiously
      significant of the warped and degraded principle of the
      school, as if "nature" were indeed only another name for
      "darkness").[119] His works show remarkable force and facility;
      his subjects were painful. As Byron says--

                          Spagnoletto tainted
    His brush with all the blood of all the sainted.

      "It is a curious example of the perversity of the human mind,"
      says Stirling-Maxwell, "that subjects like these should have
      been the chosen recreations of an eye that opened in infancy on
      the palms and the fair women of Valencia, and rested for half
      a lifetime on the splendour of the Bay of Naples." His life
      was like his art, being "one long contrast between splendour
      and misery, black shadow and shining light" (Scott). He made
      his way when quite a youth to Rome, where one day, as he was
      sketching in the streets, dressed in rags and eating crusts,
      he was picked up by a cardinal and taken into his household.
      They called him in Italy, owing to his small stature, by the
      name Lo Spagnoletto, the little Spaniard. But Ribera could
      not brook the cardinal's livery, and stole away into poverty
      and independence again. He especially studied the works of
      Caravaggio, and went afterwards to Parma to study Correggio.
      Then he moved to Naples, where a picture-dealer discovered his
      talent and gave him his daughter in marriage. A large picture
      of the martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, which he painted about
      this time, was exhibited by the dealer on the balcony of his
      house, and created such a _furore_ that the Spanish Viceroy,
      delighted at finding the painter to be a Spaniard, loaded him
      with appointments and commissions. This was the making of
      Ribera's fortune. He soon became very wealthy--never going out
      but in his carriage, and with an equerry to accompany him, and
      so hard had he to work to keep pace with his orders that his
      servants were instructed at last to interrupt him when working
      hours were fairly over. He kept open house--entertaining
      Velazquez, for instance, when the latter visited Naples in
      1630; but though lavish he was yet mean. Ribera, Corenzio (a
      Greek), and Caracciolo (a Neapolitan), formed a memorable
      cabal, with the object of establishing a local monopoly in
      the artistic profession for themselves. In this object, by
      means of force and fraud, they succeeded for many years.
      Domenichino, Annibale Carracci, and Guido Reni were all more
      or less victims of the cabal. The story of the conspiracy of
      Ribera and his allies to get the commission for painting the
      chapel of St. Januarius, forms one of the most curious and
      disgraceful chapters in the history of art, and may be read in
      Lanzi's _History of Painting_ (vol. ii. in Bohn's translation).
      Ribera's life ended like his pictures, in darkness. His
      daughter was carried off by one of his great friends, Don Juan
      of Austria, and Ribera was so overwhelmed with grief that he
      left Naples and was never more heard of.[120]

The Virgin, accompanied here by St. John and Mary Magdalen, is weeping
over the dead Christ--the subject termed by the Italians a _Pietà_. It
is instructive to compare this Spanish treatment of it with an Italian
Pietà, such as Francia's No. 180. How much more ghastly is the dead
Christ here! How much less tender are the ministering mourners!


236. CASTLE OF SANT' ANGELO, ROME.

  _Claude Joseph Vernet_ (French: 1714-1789).

      Vernet, one of the most celebrated of French landscape and
      marine painters, received his inspiration and lived a large
      part of his life in Italy. He was born at Avignon, and in 1732
      went to Italy with a view of improving himself in historical
      painting, but the beautiful scenery of Genoa and Naples
      induced him to devote himself to marine landscape. One of his
      Mediterranean pictures is No. 1393 in this Gallery. It is
      said that on his first voyage he was so impressed with the
      effect of a stormy sea as to have himself tied to the mast
      in order to be able more accurately to observe it. For some
      time Vernet lived in poverty. He had to paint carriages, and
      a picture, afterwards sold for 5000 francs, procured him only
      a single suit of clothes. His subjects were now the rivers,
      landscapes, and costumes of Rome (as in this picture). In 1752
      he was invited to Paris by Louis XV. In the following year
      he was elected a member of the French Academy of Arts, and
      was commissioned by the Government to paint his celebrated
      pictures, now in the Louvre, of the seaports of France. This
      task occupied him the greater part of the year. He died in
      the Louvre, where he had been given apartments by the king.
      His last years were embittered by the madness of his wife, a
      daughter of the Pope's naval commandant, whom he had married
      in 1745. He was the grandfather of the celebrated historical
      painter, Horace Vernet (see 1285).

Past and present in the eternal city, as it was in Vernet's day. Behind
is the castle which the Emperor Hadrian had built for his family tomb,
in which were buried several of the Emperors after him, and the history
of which in the Middle Ages was almost the history of Rome itself. In
front is a fête on the Tiber, with a fashionable crowd in crinolines
watching the boats tilting on the river.


237. A WOMAN'S PORTRAIT.

  _Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See 45._

Of interest as being one of his last works: dated 1666.


238. DEAD GAME.

  _Jan Weenix_ (Dutch: 1640-1719).

      Jan Weenix, the younger, was born at Amsterdam--the son of
      Jan Baptista Weenix (see 1096)--and is usually considered
      the best of all Dutch artists in this style. For some years
      he was employed at the Court of John William, Elector of the
      Palatinate.

A stag, a couple of hares (a speciality with this artist), a heron, and
a fowling-piece.


239. A MOONLIGHT SCENE.

  _Aart van der Neer_ (Dutch: 1603-1677). _See_ 152.

A good example of "the penetrating melancholy of moonlight"--an effect
in which this painter excelled.


240. CROSSING THE FORD.

  _Nicolas Berchem_ (Dutch: 1620-1683). _See_ 78.


242. THE GAME OF BACKGAMMON.

  _Teniers_ (Flemish: 1610-1694). _See_ 154.

"An example," says Mr. J. T. Nettleship in a comparison between Morland
and some of the Dutch masters, "not only of the works that Morland
loved, but of the life (alas!) he best loved too. In one respect it
at once takes rank above the English painter, for every man must be a
portrait; the two playing might indeed be English as well as Dutch, the
man looking on is a degraded boor. In the chimney-place are several men
farther off--one with his back to you is seated on a bench with his
head against the chimney-jamb, a 'poor drinker,' he seems. The standing
man, standing with his back to the fire, smoking a long clay, looks
half-pitying, half-scornful at the feebler sinner" (_George Morland_,
p. 23).


243. AN OLD MAN.

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

A noble picture of the dignity of old age (dated 1659).


244. A SHEPHERD WITH A LAMB.

  _Spagnoletto_ (Spanish: 1598-1648). _See_ 235.


245. PORTRAIT OF A SENATOR.

  _Hans Baldung_ (German-Swabian: 1476-1545).

      This portrait is dated 1514, and signed with the monogram
      of Albert Dürer, to whom it was formerly ascribed. But the
      monogram is now said to be a forgery, and the picture is
      identified as the work of Dürer's friend Baldung. On the death
      of Dürer (in 1528) Baldung received a lock of his hair (now
      preserved in the Library of the Academy of Arts at Vienna), and
      Dürer, in his Journal in the Low Countries, records having sold
      several of Baldung's engravings. Baldung, painter, engraver,
      and designer, was a native of Gmünd in Swabia, and his earliest
      works show the influence of Martin Schongauer (see 658). He
      lived at Freiburg-in-the-Breisgau (in the monastery at which
      place is his greatest work, a "Coronation of the Virgin"),
      and also at Strassburg, of which latter city he became a
      senator shortly before his death. Baldung's portraits, says
      the Official Catalogue, "are highly individual and full of
      character. When unsigned they have sometimes passed for the
      work of Dürer, but they want his searching modelling." Baldung
      acquired and adopted the name of Green or Grün, either from his
      habit of dressing in that colour or from his fondness for a
      peculiarly brilliant tint of green often found in his pictures.

The influence of Dürer was strong on Hans Baldung, and a similar spirit
is discernible in the works of both painters. This old man, strong and
yet melancholy, is precisely true to Dürer's favourite type of human
strength founded on labour and sorrow. And the choice of this type is
characteristic of his mind. With the Reformation came, says Mr. Ruskin,
"the Resurrection of Death. Never, since man first saw him face to
face, had his terror been so great." Nothing shows the character of men
of that time so clearly as the way in which they severally meet the
King of Terror. "It haunted Dürer long; and the answer he gave to the
question of the grave was that of patient hope; and twofold, consisting
of one design in praise of Fortitude, and another in praise of
Labour.... The plate of 'Melancholia' is the history of the sorrowful
toil of the earth, as the 'Knight and Death' is of its sorrowful
patience under temptation" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iv.).


246. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Girolamo del Pacchia_ (Sienese: 1477-1535).

      Pacchia, who is often confused with his fellow-countryman
      Pacchiarotto, was born at Siena, being the son of a
      cannon-founder from Croatia who had settled in that city.
      He first studied in his native town, but afterwards went to
      Florence. His works recall the style of the Florentine masters
      of the time. In 1500 he went to Rome, returning to Siena with
      an established reputation in 1508. Many of his works are to be
      seen in the churches and picture-gallery in that city, famous
      alike for its religious revivals, its artistic activity, and
      its civic turbulence. Pacchia, in company with Pacchiarotti,
      joined the revolutionary club of the Bardotti, and on its
      suppression in 1535 the two artists fled the city. After that
      date no record of Pacchia has been found.

This graceful picture resembles the style of Andrea del Sarto.


247. "ECCO HOMO!"

  _Matteo di Giovanni_ (Sienese: 1435-1495). _See_ 1155.

"Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple
robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!" (Ecco Homo) (St.
John xix. 5). In the "glory" around the head are the Latin letters
signifying "Jesus Christ of Nazareth"; on the outer edge of the
background, "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in
heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth" (Philippians
ii. 10).


248. THE VISION OF ST. BERNARD.

  _Fra Filippo Lippi_ (Florentine: about 1406-1469). _See_ 666.

"St. Bernard was remarkable for his devotion to the blessed Virgin; one
of his most celebrated works, the _Missus est_, was composed in her
honour as mother of the Redeemer; and in eighty sermons from the Song
of Solomon he set forth her divine perfection. His health was extremely
feeble; and once, when he was employed in writing his homilies, and was
so ill that he could scarcely hold the pen, she graciously appeared
to him, and comforted and restored him by her divine presence" (Mrs.
Jameson: _Legends of the Monastic Orders_, p. 152). Notice the peculiar
shape of the picture, the upper corners of the square being cut away.
The picture was painted in 1447 (the artist receiving 40 _lire_, equal
now perhaps to £60, for it and another work) to fit a space over
the door of the Palazzo della Signoria at Florence. "Have you ever
considered, in the early history of painting, how important is the
history of the frame-maker? It is a matter, I assure you, needing your
very best consideration, for the frame was made before the picture. The
painted window is much, but the aperture it fills was thought of before
it. The fresco by Giotto is much, but the vault it adorns was planned
first ... and in pointing out to you this fact, I may once for all
prove to, you the essential unity of the arts" (_Ariadne Florentina_,
§§ 59, 60).


249. THE MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA.

  _Lorenzo di San Severino_ (Umbrian: painted 1483-1496).

      This picture is signed by the artist "Laurentius _the second_
      of Severino"--to distinguish himself from the earlier Lorenzo,
      who was born in 1374, and who painted some frescoes at Urbino
      in 1416. The date of this picture is approximately fixed by
      the fact that Catherine is described on her nimbus as "saint,"
      and she was not canonised till 1461; and perhaps also by the
      influence on Lorenzo of Crivelli (painted 1468-1493), which has
      been traced in the execution of the details: see for instance
      the cucumber and apple on the step of the throne (_cf._ 724,
      etc).

St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) is one of the most remarkable
figures of the Middle Ages. She was the daughter of a dyer, brought
up in the humblest of surroundings, and wholly uneducated. When only
thirteen she entered the monastic life as a nun of the Dominican
order (St. Dominic is here present on the right), and at once became
famous in the city for her good works. She tended the sick and
plague-stricken, and was a minister of mercy to the worst and meanest
of her fellow-creatures. On one occasion a hardened murderer, whom
priests had visited in vain, was so subdued by her tenderness that he
confessed his sins, begged her to wait for him by the scaffold, and
died with the names of Jesus and Catherine on his lips. In addition to
her piety and zeal she succeeded as a mediator between Florence and
her native city, and between Florence and the Pope; she travelled to
Avignon, and there induced Gregory XI. to return to Rome; she narrowly
escaped political martyrdom during one of her embassies from Gregory
to the Florentine republic; she preached a crusade against the Turks,
and she aided, by her dying words, to keep Pope Urban on the throne.
But "when she died she left behind her a memory of love more than of
power, the fragrance of an unselfish and gentle life. Her place is in
the heart of the humble. Her prayer is still whispered by poor children
on their mother's knee, and her relics are kissed daily by the simple
and devout."

The mystical marriage which forms the subject of this picture, where
the infant Christ is placing the ring on her finger, suggests the
secret of her power. Once when she was fasting and praying, Christ
himself appeared to her, she said, and gave her his heart. For love
was the keynote of her religion, and the mainspring of her life.
In no merely figurative sense did she regard herself as the spouse
of Christ; she dwelt upon the bliss, beyond all mortal happiness,
which she enjoyed in supersensual communion with her Lord. The world
has not lost its ladies of the race of St. Catherine, beautiful and
pure and holy, who live lives of saintly mercy in the power of human
and heavenly love. (See further, for St. Catherine of Siena, J. A.
Symonds, _Sketches in Italy_ (Siena), from which the above account is
principally taken.)


250. FOUR SAINTS.

  _The Meister von Werden_ (German: 15th Century).

      The Meister von Werden, or the painter of this picture and of
      Nos. 251 and 253, which were found in the old Abbey of Werden,
      near Düsseldorf, is otherwise unknown. These three pictures
      probably formed folding wings of an altar-piece. A fourth
      panel, belonging to the same series, is in the National Gallery
      of Scotland.

The saints in this picture are Jerome (with his lion), Benedict (in the
habit of his order), Giles (with his doe), and Romuald (founder of the
eremite order of the Camaldoli).


251. FOUR SAINTS.

  _The Meister von Werden. See under_ 250.

The saints in this picture are Augustine (with the heart transfixed
with an arrow), Ludger (Bishop of Münster, Apostle of Saxony), Hubert
(patron saint of the chase, see No. 783) and Maurice.


252. THE CONVERSION OF ST. HUBERT.

  _The Meister von Werden. See under_ 250.


253. THE MASS OF ST. HUBERT.

  _The Meister von Werden. See under_ 250.

For St. Hubert, see under 783. Here the saint, in his canonicals, is
represented bending before the altar; while an angel from heaven is,
according to the legend, descending with the stole.


254-261. FRAGMENTS OF AN ALTAR-PIECE.

_The Meister von Liesborn_ (German: about 1465).

      The principal work of this master, whose name has not come
      down to us, was a high altar-piece for a convent church of the
      Benedictines at Liesborn, near Münster in Westphalia. This
      work was cut in pieces and sold in 1807, when the convent was
      suspended, and Napoleon established the modern kingdom of
      Westphalia. Some of the pieces were afterwards lost, some were
      obtained by different collectors, while others, which were
      acquired by Herr Krüger of Minden, were purchased in 1854 by
      the British Government. The sweet but feeble faces, with the
      gold background, recall the earliest Lower Rhine School, of
      which the Westphalian was an offshoot.

In 259--a Head of Christ on the Cross--we have a fragment of the centre
compartment of the altar-piece.

In 260 and 261 we have the saints who stood by the side of the Cross
(hence their melancholy expression). In 260 the saints are St. John,
St. Benedict, and St. Scholastica (the first Benedictine nun and the
sister of St. Benedict himself). In 261 the saints are Sts. Cosmas and
Damian (see under 594), and the Virgin.

In 254 and 255 we have other saints: in 254, St. Ambrose (see under
50), St. Exuperius (a Bishop of Toulouse), and St. Jerome (saying, as
it were, "Down, down" to his lion); in 255, St. Gregory, St. Hilary,
and St. Augustine.

On either side of the central groups in the altar-piece were
represented various sacred subjects. No. 256, represents the
Annunciation; No. 257, the Purification of the Virgin and the
Presentation of Christ in the Temple; No. 258, The Adoration of the
Magi.


262. THE CRUCIFIXION.

  _School of the Meister von Liesborn. See under_ last pictures.

In the form of a predella or decoration of the base of the altar-piece.
In the centre is Christ on the Cross; on either side are four Saints;
on the left St. Scholastica, Mary Magdalen, St. Anne with the Virgin in
her arms, who holds the Infant Christ; and the Virgin. On the right St.
John the Evangelist, St. Andrew, St. Benedict, and St. Agnes with the
Lamb. In the background is a representation of Jerusalem; here depicted
as a little Westphalian town.


264. A COUNT OF HAINAULT AND HIS PATRON SAINT.

  _Unknown_ (Early Flemish).

The count and the confessor. The count, attired as a monk, is praying.
Behind him is his patron saint (St. Ambrose), holding a cross in
one hand, a scourge in the other. More important, however, than the
penitence of the count is the splendour of the robes. The picture is a
good illustration of the love of jewellery characteristic of the time.
"That this love of jewels was shared by the painters is sufficiently
shown by the amount and beauty of the jewelled ornaments introduced by
them into their pictures. Not only are brooches and clasps, sceptres
and crowns, studded with precious stones, but the hems of garments
are continually sewn with them, whilst gloves and shoes of state are
likewise so adorned" (Conway, p. 121). This picture is by some ascribed
to Gerard van der Meire (see under 1078).


265. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Unknown_ (Flemish School: Early 16th Century).


266. THE DEPOSITION FROM THE CROSS.

  _Lambert Lombard_ (Flemish: 1505-1566).

      Lambert Lombard of Liège was, says Vasari, "a distinguished
      man of letters, a most judicious painter, and an admirable
      architect." His pictures, which are scarce, are generally
      remarkable for correctness of drawing, but his colouring was
      thin and cold. Lombard, who was a pupil of Mabuse (see 656),
      travelled as a young man in Germany and France, and visited
      Italy in the suite of Cardinal Pole, when he became acquainted
      with Vasari. On his return he opened a school at Liège.


268. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

  _Paolo Veronese_ (Veronese: 1528-1588). _See under_ 26.

A striking example of the old symbolical conception, according to which
the adoration of the Magi--the tribute of the wise men from the East
to the dawning star of Christianity--was represented as taking place
in the ruins of an antique temple, signifying that Christianity was
founded upon the ruins of Paganism. This picture was painted in 1573
for the church of San Silvestro in Venice, where it remained until
1835. It is mentioned in most of the guidebooks and descriptions of
Venice. One of these published in 1792 says, in describing the church
of San Silvestro: "Many are the pictures by Tintoretto, by scholars of
Titian, by Palma Vecchio, etc.; but among them all the famous Adoration
of the Magi by Paolo Veronese deserves especial attention." The picture
has recently been covered with glass, an operation which is noteworthy
on account of the great size of the pane required, 11 ft. 7 in. by 10
ft. 7 in. The pane had to be obtained in France.


269. A KNIGHT IN ARMOUR.

  _Giorgione_ (Venetian: 1477-1510).

      Giorgio[121] of Castelfranco, called Giorgione, George the
      Great,--a name given him, according to Vasari, "because of
      the gifts of his person and the greatness of his mind,"--is
      one of the most renowned of the old masters, and exercised a
      deeper influence upon the artists of his time than any other
      painter. He was the fellow-pupil with Titian of Bellini at
      Venice, and after executing works at his native place was
      employed in Venice. Here by way of exhibiting a specimen of his
      ability, he decorated the front of his house with frescoes.
      He was afterwards employed in conjunction with Titian there
      to decorate the façade of the Fondaco de' Tedeschi. These
      paintings have been destroyed by the sea-winds.[122] But what
      was more original in Giorgione's work was his small subject
      pictures. He was, says Pater, "the inventor of _genre_, of
      those easily movable pictures which serve for uses neither of
      devotion, nor of allegorical or historical teaching--little
      groups of real men and women, amid congruous furniture or
      landscape--morsels of actual life, conversation or music or
      play, refined upon or idealised, till they come to seem like
      glimpses of life from afar." Some of Bellini's late works
      are already of this kind; but they were a little too austere
      and sober in colour for the taste of the time. Carpaccio was
      full of brilliancy, fancy, and gaiety, but he painted few
      easel pictures. Giorgione brought to the new style all the
      resources of a poetical imagination, of a happy temper, and
      of supreme gifts as a colourist. He was, says Ruskin, one of
      "the seven supreme colourists."[123] The chief colour on his
      palette, it has been said, was sunlight. In the glowing colour
      with which he invested the human form "the sense of nudity is
      utterly lost, and there is no need nor desire of concealment
      any more, but his naked figures move among the trees like
      fiery pillars, and lie on the grass like flakes of sunshine"
      (_Modern Painters_, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. xiv. § 20).
      Giorgione, says Mr. Colvin, came to enrich Venetian painting
      further, with "a stronger sense of life and of the glory of
      the real world as distinguished from the solemn dreamland of
      the religious imagination. He had a power hitherto unknown
      of interpreting both the charm of merely human grace and
      distinction, and the natural joy of life in the golden sunlight
      among woods and meadows." Giorgione, by his originality and
      his exact correspondence with the spirit of the time, created
      a demand which other painters were forced to supply. His
      influence, says Morelli, is not only to be traced in the
      early work of Titian; it stands out broadly in the paintings
      of nearly all his Venetian contemporaries--Lotto, Palma,
      Pordenone, Bonifacio, Cariani, and many others, not to speak
      of his scholar, Sebastiano del Piombo. The surviving pictures
      which are undoubtedly by Giorgione's own hand are very few.
      This category hardly includes more than four,--the altar-piece
      at Castelfranco (see below), the so-called "Famiglia di
      Giorgione" (now identified as "Adrastus and Hypsipyle," in the
      Palazzo Giovanelli at Venice), the "Three Philosophers" (in
      the Belvedere at Vienna), and the lovely "Sleeping Venus,"
      identified by Morelli, in the Dresden Gallery. Among pictures
      in a second and less certain category, may be mentioned the
      "Concert" in the Louvre (the "Venetian Pastoral" of Rossetti's
      sonnet), another "Concert" in the Pitti, the "Head of a
      Shepherd" at Hampton Court, and (more doubtfully) No. 1160 in
      this Gallery. The number of reputed Giorgiones is very large.
      His fame has been constant from his own day to ours, and as
      every gallery desired to have a Giorgione, the wish was freely
      gratified by dealers and cataloguers. Modern criticism has
      played havoc among most of these so-called Giorgiones;[124] but
      the Giorgionesque spirit remains--unmistakable and distinct--in
      many works. Such in this Gallery are Nos. 930, 1123, and 1173,
      ascribed by the director to "the School of Giorgione." It is
      a school, as we have seen, of _genre_. It "employs itself
      mainly with painted idylls, but, in the production of this
      pictorial poetry, exercises a wonderful tact in the selecting
      of such matter as lends itself most readily and entirely to
      pictorial form, to complete expression by drawing and colour.
      For although its productions are painted poems, they belong
      to a sort of poetry which tells itself without an articulated
      story." Vasari remarked that it was difficult to give
      Giorgione's representations an explanatory name. As Morelli has
      well pointed out, the genius of Titian was wholly dramatic;
      Giorgione was a lyric poet, who gives us at most dramatic
      lyrics. A picture by Giorgione or in his style "presents us
      with a kind of profoundly significant and animated instant, a
      mere gesture, a look, a smile perhaps--some brief and wholly
      concrete moment--into which, however, all the motives, all
      the interests and effects of a long history, have condensed
      themselves, and which seem to absorb past and future in an
      intense consciousness of the present. Such ideal instants the
      school of Giorgione selects, with its admirable tact, from
      that feverish, tumultuously coloured life of the old citizens
      of Venice--exquisite pauses in Time, in which, arrested thus,
      we seem to be spectators of all the fulness of existence, and
      which are like some consummate extract or quintessence of
      life." Pictures in the Giorgionesque spirit are, as it were,
      "musical intervals in human existence--filled with people with
      intent faces listening to music, to the sound of water, to time
      as it flies" (Pater: "The School of Giorgione," _Fortnightly
      Review_, October 1877, reprinted in the third edition of _The
      Renaissance_). The landscapes of Giorgione have the same
      quality of quickened life. "Most painted landscapes leave
      little power to call up the actual physical sensations of the
      scenes themselves, but Giorgione's never fail to produce this
      effect; they speak directly to the sensations, making the
      beholder feel refreshed and soothed, as if actually reclining
      on the grass in the shade of the trees, with his mind free
      to muse on what delights it most. In so far as poetry may
      be compared to painting, Giorgione's feeling for landscape
      suggests Keats" (Mary Logan: _Guide to the Italian Pictures at
      Hampton Court_, p. 13).

      Giorgione's pictures may be described as showing us golden
      moments of a golden age. His life, as told by Vasari and
      Ridolfi, corresponds with this ideal, which also was in exact
      accordance with the spirit of the times. Many readers will
      remember that it is with a mention of Giorgione that Ruskin
      prefaces his noble description of Venice in the days of the
      early Renaissance: "Born half-way between the mountains and the
      sea--that young George of Castelfranco--of the Brave Castle;
      stout George they called him, George of Georges, so goodly a
      boy he was--Giorgione. Have you ever thought what a world his
      eyes opened on--fair, searching eyes of youth? What a world
      of mighty life, from those mountain roots to the shore; of
      loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, to the marble
      city, and became himself as a fiery heart to it?" (_Modern
      Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. ix. § 1). He spent his childhood
      at Castelfranco, "where the last crags of the Venetian Alps
      break down romantically with something of a park-like grace to
      the plain." "Giorgione's ideal of luxuriant pastoral scenery,
      the country of pleasant copses, glades and brooks, amid which
      his personages love to wander or recline with lute and pipe,
      was derived, no doubt, from these natural surroundings of his
      childhood." Close by his birthplace is Asolo, whence the word
      _asolare_, "to disport in the open air; to amuse oneself at
      random" (see Browning's _Asolando_). Giorgione "found his way
      early into a circle of notable persons--people of courtesy,
      and became initiated into those differences of personal type,
      manner, and even of dress, which are best understood there.
      Not far from his home lived Catherine of Cornaro, formerly
      Queen of Cyprus, and up in the towers which still remain, Tuzio
      Costanzo, the famous _condottiére_--a picturesque remnant
      of mediæval manners, in a civilisation rapidly changing"
      (Pater). In Venice Giorgione's gracious bearing and varied
      accomplishments introduced him into congenial company. "He took
      no small delight," says Vasari, "in love-passages and in the
      sound of the lute, to which he was so cordially devoted, and
      which he practised so constantly, that he played and sang with
      the most exquisite perfection, insomuch that he was for this
      cause frequently invited to musical assemblies and festivals
      by the most distinguished personages." "It happened, about his
      thirty-fourth year, that in one of those parties at which he
      entertained his friends with music, he met a certain lady of
      whom he became greatly enamoured, and 'they rejoiced greatly,'
      says Vasari, 'the one and the other in their love.' And two
      quite different legends concerning it agree in this, that it
      was through this lady he came by his death; Ridolfi relating
      that, being robbed of her by one of his pupils, he died of
      grief at the double treason; Vasari, that she being secretly
      stricken of the plague, and he making his visits to her as
      usual, he took the sickness from her mortally, along with her
      kisses, and so briefly departed" (Pater).[125]

This little panel is a study for the figure of San Liberale, the
warrior-saint, in the altar-piece by Giorgione at Castelfranco--one of
his acknowledged masterpieces, and according to Ruskin one of the two
best pictures in the world.[126] Notice "the bronzed, burning flesh"
of the knight--"the right Giorgione colour on his brow" characteristic
of a race of seamen (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. v. ch.
i. § 19). This "original little study in oil, with the delicately
gleaming silver-grey armour is," says Mr. Pater, "one of the greatest
treasures of the National Gallery, and in it, as in some other knightly
personages attributed to Giorgione, people have supposed the likeness
of his own presumably gracious presence." From a MS. memorandum on the
back of the Castelfranco picture, it appears, however, that the warrior
was said to represent Gaston de Foix. The only difference between this
study and the picture is that in the altar-piece the warrior wears his
helmet, while in the picture he is bareheaded. On this ground, and
owing to the high finish of our picture, some have argued that it is
not an original study for the picture, but a later copy from it (see
_e.g._ Richter's _Italian Art in the National Gallery_, p. 86). The
argument does not seem conclusive. Do artists never make elaborate
studies? and is not an artist as likely to vary his design as a copyist
his model? Our picture, which was formerly in the collection of
Benjamin West, P.R.A., was bequeathed to the National Gallery by Samuel
Rogers.


270. "NOLI ME TANGERE!"

  _Titian_ (Venetian: 1477-1576). _See 4._

A picture of the evensong of nature and of the evening of a life's
tragedy. "The hues and harmonies of evening" are upon the distant hills
and plain; and whilst the shadows fall upon the middle slopes, there
falls too "the awful shadow of some unseen Power" upon the repentant
woman who has been keeping her vigil in the peaceful solitude; at the
sound of her name she has turned from her weeping and fallen forward
on her knees towards him whom she now knows to be her master. "The
impetuosity with which she has thrown herself on her knees in shown
by the fluttering drapery of her sleeve,[127] which is still buoyed
up by the air; thus with a true painter's art telling the action of
the previous moment" (_Quarterly Review_, October 1888). She stretches
out her hand to touch him, but is checked by his words; as Christ, who
is represented with a hoe in his hand because she had first supposed
him to be the gardener, bids her forbear: "Touch me not," "noli me
tangere," "for I am not yet ascended to my Father:" it is not on this
side of the hills that the troubled soul can enter into the peace of
forgiveness.

This beautiful picture was bequeathed to the National Gallery by Samuel
Rogers. It is usually ascribed to Titian's earlier or "Giorgionesque"
period. "The Magdalen is, appropriately enough, of the same type as
the exquisite golden-blond courtesans--or, if you will, models--who
constantly appear and re-appear in this period of Venetian art" (C.
Phillips: _The Earlier Work of Titian_, p. 52).


271. "ECCE HOMO!"

  _Guido_ (Eclectic-Bologna: 1575-1642). _See 11._

For the subject, see under 15, by Correggio. It was from Correggio that
the Eclectics borrowed the type of face for this subject--which was
a favourite one with them; but notice how much more they dwell on the
physical pain and horror, how much less on the spiritual beauty, than
Correggio did.


272. AN APOSTLE.

  _Unknown_ (Italian: 16th century).

From a church near Venice. Formerly ascribed to Pordenone.


274. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Andrea Mantegna_ (Paduan: 1431-1506).

      Andrea Mantegna, the greatest master of the Paduan School, has
      a commanding name in art history, so much so that many writers
      describe the epoch of painting (from 1450 to 1500 and a little
      onwards), of which he was one of the chief representatives,
      as the _Mantegnesque_ period. "No painter more remarkable for
      originality than Mantegna ever lived. Whoever has learned to
      relish this great master will never overlook a scrap by him;
      for while his works sometimes show a certain austerity and
      harshness, they have always a force and will which belong
      to no one else" (Layard). "Intensity may be said to be the
      characteristic of Mantegna as an artist. Deeply in earnest,
      he swerved from his purpose neither to the right nor to the
      left. In expressing tragic emotion, he sometimes touched a
      realism beyond the limits prescribed by poetic art. So, too,
      he never arrived at an ideal of female beauty. But he could be
      as tender as he was stern; and we forget the homely plainness
      of his Madonnas in the devoted and boding mother or the benign
      protectress. His children are always childlike and without
      self-consciousness. His drawing was remarkably correct. An
      occasional lengthiness in his figures adds to their dignity,
      and never oversteps possible nature. Drapery he treated as a
      means of displaying the figure. This peculiarity he derived
      from an almost too exclusive study of ancient sculpture. Yet so
      thoroughly does it accord with his whole style, that none would
      willingly miss a single fold which the master thought worthy of
      almost infinite care" (Burton). He was a _tempera_ painter, and
      "excelled in harmoniously broken tones, but with little attempt
      at those rich and deep effects which by the practice of art his
      later Venetian contemporaries initiated." "He loved allegory
      and symbolism; but with him they clothed a living spirit." The
      beauty of classical bas-relief entered deep into his soul and
      ruled his imagination. His classical pictures are "statuesque
      and stately, but glow with the spirit of revived antiquity"
      (Symonds). He was equally distinguished as an engraver and a
      painter, and his plates spread his fame and influence widely
      abroad.

      Mantegna was born at Padua,[128] and according to Vasari, was
      originally, like Giotto, a shepherd boy. Like Giotto, too,
      he early displayed great aptitude for drawing, so much that
      when only ten years old he was adopted by Squarcione as son
      and pupil. Squarcione was an indifferent painter, but must
      have been an able teacher, and it was from him that Mantegna
      imbibed his love of the antique. It was Squarcione's intention
      to make him his heir, but Mantegna married a daughter of
      Jacopo Bellini, Squarcione's rival; "and when this was told
      to Squarcione he was so much displeased with Andrea that they
      were ever afterwards enemies." Of Mantegna's association with
      his brother-in-law, Giovanni Bellini, the pictures numbered 726
      and 1417 in this gallery are an interesting record. Mantegna
      soon obtained recognition. Among the most important of his
      early works are the frescoes of the chapel of St. James and St.
      Christopher in the church of the Eremitani at Padua. Copies of
      some of these may be seen in the Arundel Society's collection.
      Of about the same date is "The Agony in the Garden," No.
      1417. To his early period belong also the "St. George" in the
      Venice Academy, and the triptych in the Uffizi. The picture
      now before us, the beautiful "Madonna della Vittoria," and
      the "Parnassus" of the Louvre belong to a maturer time. In
      1466 Mantegna went, at the invitation of the Marquis Ludovico
      Gonzaga, to the court of Mantua, and there he remained till his
      death, as painter-in-ordinary at a salary of £30 a year--with
      the exception of two years spent in painting for Pope Innocent
      VIII. at Rome. Many of Mantegna's frescoes at Mantua are now
      obliterated; but some are preserved in the Camera degli Sposi
      in the Ducal Palace, and in spite of restorations, exhibit some
      of the master's characteristics in perfection. For the palace
      of St. Sebastiano at Mantua, he painted in _tempera_ on canvas
      the "Triumph of Cæsar," now at Hampton Court. Although much
      defaced, this large composition still proclaims the genius of
      the master who "loved to resuscitate the ancient world, and
      render it to the living eye in all its detail, and with all its
      human interest." The sketch by Rubens in our Gallery, No. 278,
      was made from a portion of Mantegna's cartoons. In a similar
      style is the master's "Triumph of Scipio," No. 902, completed
      shortly before his death. At Rome (1488-1490) he decorated the
      chapel of the Belvedere, now demolished.

      Though in the service of princes, Mantegna knew his worth, and
      was wont to say that "Ludovico might be proud of having in him
      something that no other prince in Italy could boast of." He
      liked, too, to live in the grand style of his age. It appears
      that he spent habitually more money than he could afford, and
      after his death his sons had to sell the pictures in his studio
      for the payment of his creditors. Still more was he a child of
      his age--the age of the revival of classical learning--in his
      love for the antique. He spent much of his money in forming
      a collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, and the forced
      sale of its chief ornament, a bust of Faustina, is said to
      have broken his heart. "He was the friend of students, eagerly
      absorbing the knowledge brought to light by antiquarian
      research; and thus independently of his high value as a
      painter, he embodies for us in art that sincere passion for the
      ancient world which was the dominating intellectual impulse of
      his age." With Mantegna, classical antiques were not merely
      the foibles of a collector, but the models of his art. He was
      "always of opinion," says Vasari, "that good antique statues
      were more perfect, and displayed more beauty in the different
      parts, than is exhibited by nature." Of some of his works what
      Vasari adds is no doubt true--that they recall the idea of
      stone rather than of living flesh. But Mantegna studied nature
      closely too; for, as Goethe said of his pictures, "the study of
      the antique gives form, and nature adds appropriate movement
      and the health of life." Mantegna died at Mantua and was
      buried in a chapel of the Church of Sant' Andrea. The expenses
      incurred by him in founding and decorating this family chapel
      had added seriously to his embarrassments. "Over his grave was
      placed a bronze bust, most noble in modelling and perfect in
      execution. The broad forehead, with its deeply cloven furrows,
      the stern and piercing eyes, the large lips compressed with
      nervous energy, the massive nose, the strength of jaw and
      chin, and the superb clusters of the hair escaping from a
      laurel-wreath upon the royal head, are such as realise for us
      our notion of a Roman in the days of the republic. Mantegna's
      own genius has inspired this masterpiece, which tradition
      assigns to the medallist Sperando Maglioli. Whoever wrought it
      must have felt the incubation of the mighty painter's spirit,
      and have striven to express in bronze the character of his
      uncompromising art" (Symonds: _The Renaissance in Italy_,
      iii. 203). A plaster cast from this bust hangs on one of the
      staircases in our Gallery. Mantegna's second son, Francesco,
      who in his father's later years had assisted in his studio,
      afterwards practised independently. See Nos. 639, 1106, 1381.

"One of the choicest pictures in the National Gallery," exquisite
alike in sentiment, in drawing, and in purity of colour. "Being in an
admirable state of preservation, it enables us to become acquainted
with all the characteristics of Mantegna's style, and above all to
enjoy the refinement in his rendering of the human forms, the accuracy
in his drawing, the conscientiousness in the rendering of the smallest
details" (_Richter_). For the latter point notice especially the
herbage in the foreground. Mantegna, says Mr. Ruskin, is "the greatest
leaf-painter of Lombardy," and the "exquisite outlines" here show
"the symmetry and precision of his design" (_Catalogue of Educational
Series_, p. 52). The draperies also are "of extraordinary beauty
in design and colour. The rose-coloured dress of the Virgin is most
delicately heightened with gold, and the draperies of the two saints
are of materials shot with changing colours of exquisite harmonies"
(_Poynter_). Very sweet is the expression of mingled humility and
tenderness in the mother of the Divine Child. On her right stands St.
John the Baptist, the great preacher of repentance; on her left Mary
Magdalen, the woman who repented. The Baptist bears a cross and on the
scroll attached to it are written the words (in Latin), "Behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world." The Magdalen
carries the vase of ointment--the symbol at once of her conversion
and her love ("She brought an alabaster box of ointment, and began
to wash his feet with tears.... And he said unto her, Thy sins are
forgiven"). "Mantegna combines with the most inexhaustible imagination
and invention and power, which include the whole range of art, from the
most playful fantasy to the profoundest and most passionate tragedy, a
skill of workmanship so minutely and marvellously delicate as to defy
imitation. Look at the refinement with which the drapery is drawn, the
wonderful delicacy of handling with which the gold-lights are laid on,
the beautiful and loving spirit which has presided over the execution
of the foliage in the background, and indeed of every detail in the
picture, and you will begin to have an understanding of what I mean by
workmanship as such, and how an artist proceeds whose hand has been
thoroughly trained, and who is truly in love with his art" (Poynter's
_Lectures on Art_, p. 127).


275. VIRGIN AND CHILD, ST. JOHN AND AN ANGEL.

  _Sandro Botticelli_ (Florentine: 1447-1510). _See 1034._

A beautiful and characteristic work.[129] "At first glance you may
think the picture a mere piece of affectation. Well--yes, Botticelli
is affected in the way that all men of his century necessarily were.
Much euphuism, much studied grace of manner, much formal assertion
of scholarship, mingling with his force of imagination. And he likes
twisting the fingers of hands about"--just as he likes also dancing
motion and waved drapery (see 1034) (_Mornings in Florence_, iii. 59).
The picture is characteristic also of two faculties which Botticelli
acquired from his early training as a goldsmith: first, his use of gold
as a means of enriching the light (as here in the Madonna's hair);
and, secondly, the "incomparable invention and delicacy" with which he
treated all accessory details and ornaments (as here in the scarves and
dresses). But chiefly is the picture characteristic of his "sentiment
of ineffable melancholy, of which it is hard to penetrate the sense,
and impossible to escape the spell." It may help one in understanding
the spirit of such pictures to remember that in Botticelli there met
in perfect poise the tenderness of Christian feeling with the grace
of the classical Renaissance. He was "a Greek reanimate. The first
Greeks were distinguished from the barbarians by their simple humanity;
the second Greeks--these Florentine Greeks reanimate--are human more
strongly, more deeply, leaping from the Byzantine death at the call of
Christ, 'Loose him, and let him go.' And there is upon them at once
the joy of resurrection and the solemnity of the grave"[130] (_Ariadne
Florentina_, § 161; and _Fors Clavigera_, 1872, xxii.).


276. TWO APOSTLES.

  School of _Giotto_. _See under 568._
  _See also_ (p. xix)

    Here's Giotto with his Saints a-praising God,
    That set us praising.

  BROWNING.

These solemn heads seem to breathe the very spirit of the master; but
the history of the painting forbids the supposition that we have here
the handiwork, or even the direct influence of Giotto. It is a fragment
from one of the wall-paintings in the chapel of St. John the Baptist in
the church of S. Maria del Carmine at Florence. The frescoes were not
executed till 1350, some years after the death of Giotto. The subject
of the composition to which our fragment belongs was the burial of
the Baptist. The history of these frescoes is typical of that of many
a vicissitude, and recalls the idea suggested in one of Browning's
_Dramatic Lyrics_, in which the soul of the painter watches the gradual
decay and dispersal of his life's work:--

    Wherever a fresco peals and drops,
      Wherever an outline weakens and wanes
    Till the latest life in the painting stops,
      Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains:
    One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick,
      Each tinge, not wholly escape the plaster,
    --A lion who dies of an ass's kick,
      The wronged great soul of an ancient Master.

This and two portions from other paintings of the series, now in the
institution at Liverpool, were saved from the fire which destroyed
this chapel in 1771, and became the property of Mr. Thomas Patch, the
engraver. They were brought to England by Mr. Townley. This fragment
was subsequently in the collection of the Right Hon. C. Greville, from
whom it passed into the possession of Mr. Rogers, and at the sale of
his pictures in 1856 was purchased for the National Gallery. Some other
fragments are preserved in the Cappella dell' Ammannati, in the Campo
Santo at Pisa, and one is in the town gallery at Pavia.


277. THE GOOD SAMARITAN.

  _Bassano_ (Venetian: 1510-1592). _See 173._

The wounded Jew, who had fallen among thieves, is beneath the shadow of
a great rock. The Levite is behind, engaged in sanctimonious prayer.
The good Samaritan is busy in good works. He has brought out his
flask and is raising the Jew to place him on his mule. The picture
is of additional interest as having been a favourite with Sir Joshua
Reynolds, to whom it once belonged, and who is said to have kept it
always in his studio. It was afterwards in the collection of Samuel
Rogers.


278. THE TRIUMPH OF JULIUS CÆSAR.

  _Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See 38._

One of the fruits of Rubens's visit to Italy. This picture was in
Rubens's possession at his death, and is described in the inventory as
"Three cloathes pasted upon bord, beinge the Triumph of Julius Cæsar,
after Andrew Mantegna, not full made." Mantegna's procession (somewhat
similar to the Triumph of Scipio, No. 902) was painted for the Duke of
Mantua, and is now at Hampton Court.

Any one who cares to see by a single illustration what "classic
purity of style" means, should compare Mantegna's original with this
transcript by Rubens. "The Flemish painter strives to add richness to
the scene by Bacchanalian riot and the sensuality of imperial Rome.
His elephants twist their trunks, and trumpet to the din of cymbals;
negroes feed the flaming candelabra with scattered frankincense; the
white oxen of Clitumnus are loaded with gaudy flowers, and the dancing
maidens are dishevelled Mænads. But the rhythmic procession of
Mantegna, modulated to the sound of flutes and soft recorders, carries
our imagination back to the best days and strength of Rome. His priests
and generals, captives and choric women, are as little Greek as they
are modern. In them awakes to a new life the spirit-quelling energy
of the Republic. The painter's severe taste keeps out of sight the
insolence and orgies of the Empire; he conceives Rome as Shakespeare
did in _Coriolanus_"[131] (Symonds's _Renaissance_, iii. 200).


279. THE HORRORS OF WAR.

  _Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See 38._

"Mars, leaving the temple of Janus[132] open, is held back by Venus,
while Europe bewails the inevitable miseries of war; but he is drawn on
by the Fury Alecto, who is preceded by Plague and Famine; the figure
on the ground with the broken lute represents Concord overthrown. Mars
and the two female figures behind him are said to be the portraits of
Rubens and his two wives" (Official Catalogue).

This is a sketch of the large picture painted by Rubens in 1637 for
his friend Sustermans, and now in the Pitti palace at Genoa. This
sketch, with the preceding one, was in the collection of Mr. Rogers,
where Ruskin saw it, as recorded in the following extract from his
autobiography, in which he describes "a lesson given to me by George
Richmond at one of Mr. Rogers's breakfasts (the old man used to ask
me, finding me always reverent to him, joyful in his pictures, and
sometimes amusing, as an object of curiosity to his guests), date
uncertain, but probably in 1842":--

      Until that year, Rubens had remained the type of colour power
      to me, and Titian's flesh tints of little worth! But that
      morning, as I was getting talkative over the wild Rubens's
      sketch (War or Discord, or Victory or the Furies, I forget
      what), Richmond said, pointing to the Veronese beneath it,
      "Why are you not looking at this--so much greater in manner?"
      "Greater--how?" I asked, in surprise; "it seems to me quite
      tame beside the Rubens." "That may be," said Richmond, "but the
      Veronese is true, the other wildly conventional." "In what way
      true?" I asked, still not understanding. "Well," said Richmond,
      "compare the pure shadows on the flesh in Veronese, and its
      clear edge, with Rubens's ochre and vermilion, and outline of
      asphalt" (_Praeterita_, ii. 181).


280. THE MADONNA OF THE POMEGRANATE.

  _Giovanni Bellini_ (Venetian: 1426-1516). _See 189._

A prophetic sense of the Saviour's sufferings is signified by the
symbol of the pomegranate--

        Pomegranate, which, if cut deep down the middle,
    Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.

  MRS. BROWNING: _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_.

    Years pass and change; mother and child remain.
      Mother so proudly sad, so sadly wise,
      With perfect face and wonderful calm eyes,
    Full of a mute expectancy of pain:
    Child of whose love the mother seems so fain,
      Looking far off, as if in other skies
      He saw the hill of crucifixion rise,
    And knew the horror, and would not refrain.

  _Love in Idleness_ (1883).

This picture, which is signed by the painter, probably dates from
1485-88.


281. ST. JEROME READING.

  _Marco Basaiti_ (Venetian: painted 1500-1521).

      Basaiti--born in Friuli; according to some writers, of Greek
      parents--was assistant to Alvise Vivarini. He was one of the
      early Venetian painters in oils. His works when well preserved
      are (says Sir F. Burton) brilliant in colour, and display
      great ability in the general management of the accessories,
      especially in the landscape backgrounds, which, according to
      Zanetti, he contrived to unite with his figures more skilfully
      than his contemporaries.

The scenery, says Gilbert (_Cadore_, p. 42), is that of Serravalle
in Titian's country--Serravalle, "the true gate of the hills," with
walls and towers rising steeply on the hill-side. The way in which
the old masters thus consigned their saints and anchorites to
the hill-country is very typical of the mediæval view of
landscape. "The idea of retirement from the world for the sake of
self-mortification ... gave to all mountain solitude at once a sanctity
and a terror, in the mediæval mind, which were altogether different
from anything that it had possessed in the un-Christian periods....
Just in so much as it appeared necessary for the noblest men to retire
to the hill-recesses before their missions could be accomplished,
or their spirit perfected, in so far did the daily world seem by
comparison to be pronounced profane and dangerous; and to those who
loved that world and its work, the mountains were thus voiceful with
perpetual rebuke.... And thousands of hearts, which might otherwise
have felt that there was loveliness in the wild landscape, shrank from
it in dread, because they knew that the monk retired to it for penance,
and the hermit for contemplation" (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv.
ch. xiv. § 10).


282. THE GLORIFICATION OF THE VIRGIN.

  _Bertucci_ (Umbrian: 16th Century).

      Formerly ascribed in the Official Catalogue to Lo Spagna (for
      whom see under 1032); by other critics attributed to Giovanni
      Battista of Faenza, called Bertucci (the monkey), an artist
      who borrowed both from the Umbrian School and from Lorenzo
      Costa. The similarity between this picture and No. 629, by the
      latter artist, especially in the playing angels at the foot of
      the throne, is remarkable (see Richter's _Italian Art in the
      National Gallery_, p. 52). Works by Bertucci are to be seen in
      the picture gallery of Faenza.

The little angels are very pretty. Notice the three peering out from
under the Virgin's robe. On the marble platform below one angel plays
a white-headed pipe; the other, a six-stringed rebec, which is very
accurately represented.


283. VIRGIN AND CHILD ENTHRONED.

  _Benozzo Gozzoli_ (Florentine: 1420-1498).

      Benozzo Gozzoli was the favourite pupil of the "angelical
      painter," Fra Angelico. From him Benozzo borrowed the devotion
      in his pictures, the bent of his own mind being altogether
      different. It must be remembered that "in nearly all the great
      periods of art the choice of subject has not been left to the
      painter; ... and his own personal feelings are ascertainable
      only by watching, in the themes assigned to him, what are
      the points in which he seems to take most pleasure. Thus in
      the prolonged ranges of varied subjects with which Benozzo
      Gozzoli decorated the cloisters of Pisa, it is easy to see
      that love of simple domestic incident, sweet landscape, and
      glittering ornament, prevails slightly over the solemn elements
      of religious feeling, which, nevertheless, the spirit of the
      age instilled into him in such measure as to form a very lovely
      and noble mind, though still one of the second order" (_Modern
      Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iii. § 8). The earlier works
      of Benozzo are entirely in Fra Angelico's manner. His later
      style (of which an example may be seen in No. 591) presents
      the greatest contrast to that master; for Benozzo is "the
      first of all the Florentine painters who seem to have been
      smitten with the beauty of the natural world and its various
      appearances. His later pictures overflow with the delighted
      sense of this beauty. He was the first to create rich landscape
      backgrounds, with cities, villas, and trees, rivers, and
      richly-cultivated valleys, bold rocks and hills. He displays
      the richest fancy for architectural forms,--open porticoes,
      elegant arcades, and balconies. In the representation of the
      human figure, we find gaiety and whim, feeling and dignity, in
      the happiest combination" (Layard). Like other painters of the
      time Benozzo began his career as a worker in metal, and his
      name is found amongst the artificers who assisted Ghiberti in
      making the celebrated gates for the Baptistery at Florence.
      He next entered the school of Fra Angelico, accompanying his
      master to Rome and Orvieto. In 1459 he was employed to decorate
      the walls of the small chapel in the Medici, now Riccardi
      Palace, and here he first gave rein to his own fancies. Copies
      from these frescoes are included in the Arundel Society's
      collection, as well as from those in the church of S. Agostino
      at S. Gimignano, where Benozzo was next employed. The chief
      work of his life was, however, the painting of the Campo Santo
      at Pisa. This occupied him from 1469-1485. Twenty-one of the
      frescoes were by his own hand. They are much injured; for
      "when any dignitary of Pisa was to be buried, they peeled off
      some Benozzo Gozzoli and put up a nice new tablet to the new
      defunct" (_Praeterita_, vol. ii. ch. vi., where Ruskin gives
      a charming account of happy days spent in copying Benozzo's
      work). These frescoes are remarkable for their wealth of fancy
      and picturesque detail. The Pisans themselves were so well
      pleased that they presented the painter in 1478 with a tomb,
      that his body might repose amidst the great works of his life.
      He died at Pisa twenty years later.

This was a picture painted very much to order. The figure of the Virgin
was specially directed--so it appears from the original contract,
dated 1461, still in existence--to be made similar in mode, form, and
ornaments to one by Fra Angelico, now in the Florentine Academy, and
it was also stipulated that "the said Benozzo shall at his own cost
diligently gild the said panel throughout, both as regards figures and
ornaments." The prices paid for such commissions in those days may be
judged from the fact that in the case of his great frescoes at Pisa,
Benozzo contracted to paint three a year for 10 ducats each (= say
£100). As for Benozzo's own personal feelings, it is easy to see with
what pleasure he put in the pretty flowers in the foreground for St.
Francis, and the sweet-faced angels behind the throne, and with what
gusto he shot the gold in their draperies. The figure on our extreme
left is St. Zenobius. His embroidered cope is very rich. The details of
needlework in the picture will well repay careful study. Compared with
all this, the kneeling St. Jerome and St. Francis and the other saints
appear somewhat perfunctory. Notice, too, the bright goldfinches on the
alabaster steps, introduced, we may suppose, in honour of

    Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again!
    He that in his Catholic wholeness used to call the very flowers
    Sisters, brothers--and the beasts--whose pains are hardly less
      than ours!


284. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Bartolommeo Vivarini_ (Venetian: painted 1450-1499).

      Bartolommeo Vivarini of Murano was the younger brother of
      Antonio (see 768), with whom he began to work in partnership in
      1450--as is shown by the inscription on the great altar-piece
      by the two brothers, now in the Pinacoteca of Bologna.
      Bartolommeo appears to have studied at Padua, and the influence
      of Squarcione is manifest in the painter's striving after
      correctness of form. "The ornate character of his altar-pieces,
      with gold heightening, garlands of fruit and flowers and
      fluttering fillets, is also borrowed from the Paduans, and
      lends festal pomp and solemnity to the whole."

Of Bartolommeo Vivarini it is recorded that he painted (in 1473) the
first oil picture that was exhibited in Venice. This one, however, is
in tempera. "The figures in Bartolommeo's pictures are still hard in
outline,--thin (except the Madonna's throat, which always in Venice, is
strong as a pillar), and much marked in sinew and bone (studied from
life, mind you, not by dissection); exquisitely delicate and careful
in pure colour;--in character portraits of holy men and women, such
as then were. There is no idealism here whatever. Monks and nuns had
indeed faces and mien like these saints, when they desired to have the
saints painted for them" (_Guide to the Venetian Academy_, p. 6).


285. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Francesco Morone_ (Veronese: 1473-1529).

      Francesco is one of the best masters in the earlier style of
      the Veronese School. He was the son of Domenico Morone (1211),
      the friend and fellow-worker of Girolamo dai Libri (748) and
      the master of Morando (735). His works are rarely to be seen
      out of Verona, but the present picture is characteristic. At
      Verona, his best work in fresco is to be seen in the decoration
      of the sacristry of S. Maria in Organo, described by Vasari.
      Among his altar-pieces, one in the same church and another
      in S. Bernardino are specially noteworthy. "There is," says
      Sir F. Burton, "something peculiarly winning in the type
      chosen for the Madonna by this painter. The small, round,
      delicately-featured head, slightly thrown back, so that the
      eyes are cast down towards the worshipper, conveys a mingled
      impression of sweetness and dignity. The finish of his easel
      pictures is remarkable; the eye is delighted by the intricate
      variegation of costly stuffs, where numerous tints broken
      together resemble what nature has wrought on the wings of some
      moths and butterflies. Such broken surfaces give additional
      value to the masses of whole colour where these more sparingly
      appear." "That the artist himself was of a harmless, lovable
      nature is evident from his will which we still possess, and
      Vasari's judgment is to the same effect when he calls him 'so
      good a man, so religious and so orderly that no word which
      was not a praiseworthy one was ever known to proceed from his
      mouth'" (Richter). Vasari adds that he was "buried in the
      church of San Domenico beside his father, and was borne to his
      grave clothed as he had desired to be, in the vestments of a
      monk of San Francesco."

"A youthful production, in which glowing colour, delicately balanced,
is combined with fine drawing and powerful modelling. Characteristic
are the regular oval of the Madonna's head and the look of simplicity
and charm which breathes in the features" (Dr. Richter in _Art
Journal_, Feb. 1895).


286. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Francesco Tacconi_ (Cremonese: painted 1464-1490).

      The only signed picture by this painter still in existence. He
      was a native of Cremona and worked there: he and his brother
      pleased the Cremonese so much by painting in the Town Hall that
      the artists were given an exemption from taxes. But he may
      be classed as a Venetian, for he was an imitator of Giovanni
      Bellini. This picture at once recalls Bellini's No. 280, and is
      in fact a copy of a Madonna by that painter in the Chiesa degli
      Scalzi at Venice.


287. LUDOVICO MARTINENGO.

  _Bartolommeo Veneziano_ (painted 1505-1530).

      The Martinengo family seems to have patronised this painter,
      as the Senator Count Martinengo, of Venice, possesses as
      an heirloom a small picture by the master which is signed
      "Bartolommeo mezzo Veneziano e mezzo Cremonese." The present
      picture (dated 1530) is signed "Bartolom. Venetus," so that he
      was perhaps a Cremonese by birth and a Venetian by artistic
      training, being probably a pupil of Giovanni Bellini (see
      Morelli's _Italian Works in German Galleries_, p. 138).

A portrait of a young man, at the age of twenty-six (as the inscription
tells us), in the costume of the Campagnia della Calza (the guild of
the stocking).


288. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, MICHAEL AND RAPHAEL.

  _Pietro Perugino_[133] (Umbrian: 1446-1523).

      Pietro Vannucci, a native of Castello della Pieve, was
      called Perugino, from the town of which he afterwards became
      a citizen. His earliest master was probably Fiorenzo di
      Lorenzo, and he is known to have also worked under Piero
      della Francesca. Afterwards he went to Florence, where,
      it is said, he studied with Leonardo da Vinci under the
      sculptor Verrocchio. There is, however, no trace of any such
      discipleship in his works, which, on the contrary, show an
      untouched development of native Umbrian art, so that Perugino
      becomes the typical representative of what Ruskin calls the
      "purist ideal." It is probable that his first visit to Florence
      was not paid till he was already established in independent
      practice. "He there remained," says Vasari, "for many months
      without even a bed to lie on, and miserably took his sleep
      upon a chest; but, turning night into day, and labouring
      without intermission, he devoted himself most fervently to
      the study of his profession." And in time he became himself a
      famous master, with Raphael for his pupil, and "he attained
      to such a height of reputation that his works were dispersed,
      not only through Florence and all over Italy, but in France,
      Spain, and other countries." He was himself too of a roving
      disposition, and he multiplied his engagements beyond his
      power of fulfilling them. In 1475 he received his first public
      commission at Perugia, but the frescoes then painted for the
      Palazzo Communale have perished. In 1480 he was employed by
      the Pope Sixtus IV., together with Signorelli and Botticelli,
      to cover the walls of the Sixtine Chapel with frescoes. Of the
      four allotted to Perugino (which occupied him in part for six
      years) three were afterwards destroyed to make room for Michael
      Angelo's "Last Judgment"; the fourth, the "Delivery of the
      Keys to St. Peter," remains. Perugino's subsequent movements
      are not easy to follow,[134] and we can only here allude to
      some of his most famous works. In 1494 he was at Venice, and
      in the same year painted his very beautiful altar-piece in
      S. Agostino at Cremona. In 1495 he contracted to paint for
      the monks of Cassino the noble Assumption now at Lyons. In
      1496 he painted for the Cathedral of Perugia, the famous
      "Sposalizio," now at Caen. To the same period in his career
      belongs the picture now before us, painted for the Certosa
      of Pavia. Down to about 1493, Perugino's easel pictures were
      executed in _tempera_ (see 181); he then adopted the new oil
      medium, which he used to such splendid effect in richness of
      colour. In 1499 he was at Perugia, engaged upon the beautiful
      frescoes in the Hall of the Bankers (Collegio del Cambio). He
      was afterwards in Florence, but in 1505 returned to Perugia,
      where in 1507 he painted the altar-piece, No. 1075 in our
      gallery. In his later years he erected a large studio in which
      several scholars were employed to execute commissions from
      his designs, and the works of this period show considerable
      inequality of execution, as well as repetition of design,
      and some falling off in richness of colouring. According to
      Vasari's gossip Perugino was very careful of his money--as one
      who had seen such hard times might well be; would only paint
      for cash down, and on all his wanderings carried his money box
      with him. "When it is fair weather," he used to say, "a man
      must build his house, that he may be under shelter when he most
      needs it." It was not, however, till middle life that he did
      literally build himself a house. At the same time he married a
      very beautiful girl, and is said to have had so much pleasure
      in seeing her wear becoming head-dresses that he would spend
      hours together in arranging that part of her toilet with his
      own hands. There is a tradition that she was the model for the
      angel who accompanies Tobias in our picture. The master was
      still painting in his 77th year, and was engaged on a fresco
      at Frontignano (now in this gallery, No. 1441), when he was
      carried off by the plague. The most famous of his pupils was
      Raphael; among the rest, the most accomplished were Giovanni lo
      Spagna (1032), and Giannicola Manni (1194).

      Perugino's work is well represented in the National Gallery,
      and its several characteristics are pointed out under the
      pictures themselves (_cf._ especially 181 and 1075). He was,
      as we have said, the typical representative of the purist
      ideal. His technical supremacy set the seal of perfection upon
      pietistic art, and the masterpiece before us is unique for
      its combination of warmth of colour, with the expression of
      religious fervour. "What this artist seems to have aimed at,
      was to create for the soul, amid the pomps and passions of this
      world, a resting-place of contemplation tenanted by saintly and
      seraphic beings." Of his life as reflected in his work, Ruskin
      gives this summary: "A sound craftsman and workman to the very
      heart's core. A noble, gracious, and quiet labourer from youth
      to death,--never weary, never impatient, never untender, never
      untrue. Not Tintoret in power, not Raphael in flexibility,
      not Holbein in veracity, not Luini in love,--their gathered
      gifts he has, in balanced and fruitful measure, fit to be the
      guide, and impulse, and father of all" (_Ariadne Florentina_,
      § 72). But Perugino, like the times in which he lived,
      presents a study in contradictions. This idealist painted his
      portrait in the Sala del Cambio; it is an unsurpassed piece of
      realism, and the hard, unsympathetic features do not belie,
      but rather win credence for Vasari's tales about his sordid
      soul. He never deviated in his art from the pietistic path he
      had chosen; but according to Vasari[135] (whose statements
      on this point are supported by some other evidence), he was
      himself an unbeliever, and on his death-bed rejected the last
      sacraments. In his art he is essentially a quietist. He is not
      successful when he represents action or movement. His ideal is
      of quiet rapture, and sacred peace. But the criminal records
      of Florence prove that he was not over-scrupulous to keep
      his hands from violence, and in the civil courts he pursued
      Michael Angelo with equal indiscretion and ill-success for
      defamation of character. His pictures reflect the landscape,
      but not the fortunes, of his native country: that the quietism
      of Perugino "should have been fashionable in Perugia, while
      the Baglioni were tearing each other to pieces, and the troops
      of the Vitelli and the Borgia were trampling upon Umbria, is
      one of the most striking paradoxes of an age rich in dramatic
      contradictions" (Symonds's _Renaissance_, iii. 218).

One of the most valuable pictures in the Gallery alike for its own
beauty and for its interest in the history of art. For Perugino
is the final representative of the old superstitious art, just as
Michael Angelo and Raphael (in his later manners) were the first
representatives of the modern scientific and anatomical art; the
epithet bestowed on Perugino by Michael Angelo, _goffo nell' arte_
(dunce, or blockhead, in art), shows how trenchant the separation
is between these two forms of artists. One may notice, then, in
this picture as a perfect example of the earlier art: First, that
everything in it is dainty and delightful, and all that it attempts
is accomplished. Michael Angelo, dashing off his impetuous thoughts,
left much of his work half done (see 790); Perugino worked steadily in
the old ways and indeed repeated ideas with so little reflection that,
according to Vasari, he was blamed for doing the same thing over and
over again. But everything is finished, even to the gilding of single
hairs. Notice also the beautiful painting of the fish.[136] Secondly,
it is a work in the school of colour, as distinguished from the school
of light and shade. "Clear, calm, placid, perpetual vision, far and
near; endless perspicuity of space, unfatigued veracity of eternal
light, perfectly accurate delineation of every leaf on the trees and
every flower in the fields" (notice especially in the foreground the
"blue flower fit for paradise" of the central compartment). "There
is no darkness, no wrong. Every colour is lovely, and every space is
light. The world, the universe, is divine; all sadness is a part of
harmony; and all gloom a part of peace." In connection with the lovely
blue in the picture (which was painted in 1494-98 for the Certosa of
Pavia), one may remember the story told of an earlier picture, how
the prior of the convent for which Perugino was painting doled out to
him the costly colour of ultramarine, and how Perugino, by constantly
washing his brushes, obtained a surreptitious hoard of the colour,
which he ultimately restored to shame the prior for his suspicions.
Thirdly, in its rendering of landscape, the picture is characteristic
of the "purism" of older art as compared with the later "naturalism."
"The religious painters impress on their landscape perfect symmetry
and order, such as may seem, consistent with the spiritual nature
they would represent. The trees grow straight, equally branched on
each side, and of slight and feathery frame. The mountains stand
up unscathed; the waters are always waveless, the skies always
calm."[137] Notice also that the sentiment of the whole picture is
like its landscape; there is no striving, nor crying, no convulsive
action; it is all one "pure passage of intense feeling and heavenly
light, holy and undefiled, glorious with the changeless passion of
eternity--sanctified with shadeless peace." Notice lastly, how in this,
as in many sacred compositions, "a living symmetry, the balance of
harmonious opposites, is one of the profoundest sources of their power.
The Madonna of Perugino in the National Gallery, with the angel Michael
on one side and Raphael on the other, is as beautiful an example as
you can have" (_Elements of Drawing_, p. 258). The subject of the
right-hand compartment is Raphael and Tobias (for which see 781); that
of the left-hand one is "the orderer of Christian warfare, Michael the
Archangel; not Milton's 'with hostile brow and visage all inflamed';
not even Milton's in kingly treading of the hills of Paradise; not
Raphael's with expanded wings and brandished spear; but Perugino's
with his triple crest of traceless plume unshaken in heaven, his hand
fallen on his crossleted sword, the truth-girdle binding his undinted
armour; God has put his power upon him, resistless radiance is on his
limbs; no lines are there of earthly strength, no trace on the divine
features of earthly anger; trustful and thoughtful, fearless, but full
of love, incapable except of the repose of eternal conquest, vessel and
instrument of Omnipotence, filled like a cloud with the victor light,
the dust of principalities and powers beneath his feet, the murmur of
hell against him heard by his spiritual ear like the winding of a shell
on the far-off sea-shore." He is thus armed as the orderer of Christian
warfare against evil; in his other character, as lord of souls, he has
the scales which hang on a tree by his side (_Ariadne Florentina_, pp.
40, 265, 266; _On the Old Road_, i. § 529; _Modern Painters_, vol. ii.
pt. iii. sec. i. ch. x. § 4; sec. ii. ch. v. § 20.)


289. "THE NIGHT WATCH."

  _Gerrit Lundens_ (Dutch: 1622-1677).

This is a copy, on a greatly reduced scale, of the famous picture by
Rembrandt (painted in 1642), now in the State-Museum at Amsterdam. It
is of interest as showing the pristine condition of its great original,
which in the earlier part of the eighteenth century was maltreated on
all four sides, and thereby shorn of some of its figures in order to
suit the dimensions of a room to which it was at that time removed. The
picture had so darkened by time or neglect, that it came to be called
"The Night Watch." The real subject is the march out of a company of
the Amsterdam Musketeers from their Headquarters' Hall, under the
command of their captain, Frans Banning Cocq, who is seen advancing
in the centre and giving orders to his lieutenant. The principal
figures are all portraits, and the names were written on the back of
the picture. Our copy was painted for Cocq himself, and after many
vicissitudes reached England at the beginning of the nineteenth century.


290. A MAN'S PORTRAIT (dated 1432).

  _Jan van Eyck_ (Early Flemish: about 1390-1440). _See 186._

A portrait of a friend of the artist, for it is inscribed "Leal
Souvenir"--and a true recollection it obviously is, and was the more
acceptable, one likes to think, for being so. "It is not the untrue
imaginary Picture of a man and his work that I want, ... but the actual
natural Likeness, true as the face itself, nay, _truer_ in a sense,
Which the Artist, if there is one, might help to give, and the Botcher
never can" (Carlyle, _Friedrich_).


291. PORTRAIT OF A GIRL.

  _Lucas Cranach_ (German: 1472-1553).

      Lucas Sunder (or possibly Müller), called Cranach from
      his native place, was one of the chief of the German
      painters,--after Dürer, the most famous artist of his day.
      He was the close friend of Martin Luther, whose features
      he several times represented. He may indeed be called the
      painter of the German Reformation, and in his later works
      the reformed doctrines receive symbolical illustration. The
      influences of the Renaissance were also at work in his art,
      as may be seen in his classical subjects. He was fond also
      of drawing birds and animals, and he often depicted hunting
      scenes. These he rendered with a realism of effect which won
      the admiration of his princely employers. It was, however, as a
      portrait-painter that he was chiefly employed. His engravings
      were also very numerous. In the lower left-hand corner of the
      picture before us, a crowned serpent will be noticed. This
      was the arms granted to him in 1508 by the Elector of Saxony,
      and it superseded his initials on all his pictures after that
      date. Of Cranach's earlier years, little is known. In 1504 he
      was established at Wittenburg as court-painter to Frederick
      the Wise, a post which he occupied under the next two Electors
      as well. He was a man of importance at Wittenburg, for he was
      twice mayor of the town, and carried on there, besides large
      art workshops, a book-printing business and an apothecary's
      shop. He was also employed in diplomatic missions, and when the
      Elector Frederick the Magnanimous was in captivity at Augsburg,
      Cranach was instrumental in procuring his release from the
      Emperor Charles V., whose portrait had in earlier years been
      taken by our painter.

"His female portraits have a sort of naïve grace that renders them
very pleasing. There is one in the National Gallery, of a young girl
in elaborate costume, which is entirely characteristic" (Bryan's
_Dictionary of Painters_).


292. MARTYRDOM OF ST. SEBASTIAN.

  _Antonio Pollajuolo_ (Florentine: 1429-1498).

      This picture is expressly ascribed by Vasari to Antonio alone.
      On the other hand, Albertini, an earlier authority (1510),
      ascribes it to Piero, the younger brother of Antonio. It is
      known that many pictures were the joint production of both
      brothers--Antonio furnishing the design, and Piero putting it
      into colour. "In the 'St. Sebastian,'" says Sir F. Burton, "we
      probably have a work so produced; the severe and strenuous
      drawing of the elder brother, the sculptor and _toreuta_ by
      profession, is visible throughout; whether he shared in the
      painting, and if he did, to what extent, may remain an open
      question."

      Antonio Pollajuolo (the "poulterer,"--so called from his
      grandfather's trade) is an interesting man from two points of
      view: first, as an instance of the union of the arts in old
      times; for he was a working goldsmith and engraver as well as
      a sculptor and painter. He took to painting comparatively late
      in life, desiring, says Vasari, "for his labour a more enduring
      memory" than belongs to works of the goldsmith's art; "and his
      brother Piero being a painter, he joined himself to him for
      the purpose of learning the modes of proceeding in painting.
      He acquired a knowledge in the course of a few months and
      became an excellent master." He became, indeed, an excellent
      draughtsman, but "neither harmony of colours nor grace was
      the strong point of this master" (Morelli's _Italian Masters
      in German Galleries_, p. 351). In 1484 Antonio was invited
      to Rome by Pope Innocent VIII., and executed some important
      monumental works in St. Peter's. His brother died in 1496;
      Antonio, two years later. The two brothers were buried in S.
      Pietro in Vincoli, where busts of them may be seen. Antonio
      is interesting, in the second place, for the developments he
      introduced into Italian painting. He was one of the first of
      the Florentines to adopt an oil medium, and the first (says
      Vasari) who had recourse to the dissection of the dead subject.
      To him, therefore, Ruskin attributes a baleful influence. "The
      virtual beginner of artistic anatomy in Italy was a man called
      'the poulterer'--Pollajuolo, a man of immense power, but on
      whom the curse of the Italian mind in this age was set at its
      deepest. See the horrible picture of St. Sebastian by him in
      our National Gallery." He was the beginner of those anatomical
      studies, continues Ruskin, which, pursued and established
      by later masters, "polluted their work with the science of
      the sepulchre, and degraded it with presumptuous and paltry
      technical skill. Foreshorten your Christ, and paint Him, if
      you can, half-putrefied--that is the scientific art of the
      Renaissance" (_Ariadne Florentina_, Appendix IV.).

How popular this "scientific art" was in its day may be seen from the
following enthusiastic account which Vasari gives of this picture:--

      A remarkable and admirably executed work, with numerous
      horses, many undraped figures, and singularly beautiful
      foreshortenings. This picture likewise contains the portrait
      of St. Sebastian himself, taken from the life--from the face
      of Gino di Ludovico Capponi, that is. The painting has been
      more extolled than any other ever executed by Antonio. He has
      evidently copied nature in this work to the utmost of his
      power, as we perceive more particularly in one of the archers,
      who, bending towards the earth, and resting his weapon against
      his breast, is employing all the force of a strong arm to
      prepare it for action; the veins are swelling, the muscles
      strained, and the man holds his breath as he applies all his
      strength to the effort. Nor is this the only figure executed
      with care; all the others are likewise well done, and in the
      diversity of their attitudes give clear proof of the artist's
      ability and of the labour bestowed by him on his work; all
      which was fully acknowledged by Antonio Pucci, who gave him
      three hundred scudi for the picture, declaring at the same time
      that he was barely paying him for the colours. This work was
      completed in the year 1475.

The dominant motive in the picture is, it will be seen, interest in
the mechanism of the human body; notice especially the muscles of the
executioners' legs and their efforts in stretching their bows. There
are, however, other points worthy of notice. "The work is not less
remarkable for the extent and variety of the landscape, and for the
sense of aerial, as distinct from mere linear, perspective. Instead
of standing up like a wall behind the figures it appears to recede to
the horizon, as in nature. The study of the remains of classical art
also is betrayed by the introduction of one of the Roman monumental
arches in the background. The groups of soldiers and horses introduced
at different distances further attest the variety of the designers'
interests" (Monkhouse: _In the National Gallery_, 1894, p. 77).


293. VIRGIN AND CHILD: STS. JEROME AND DOMINIC.

  _Filippino Lippi_ (Florentine: 1457-1504).

      Filippo Lippi, the younger (called "Filippino" to distinguish
      him from his father), was the son of Fra Filippo Lippi (see
      666), and the nun, Lucrezia Buti. In his will, Filippino left
      an annual provision of corn, wine, oil, and other necessaries
      to his beloved mother Lucrezia, daughter of Francesco Buti.
      There is perhaps no other case in art-history of father and son
      attaining such nearly equal excellence as did the two Lippis.
      Owing to his father's death when Filippino was still a boy,
      the latter became the pupil of Botticelli, and so good a pupil
      was he that the critics are often in doubt, as explained in
      the footnote, to which master to ascribe pictures.[138] The
      genius of Filippino seems to have been the more gentle, that of
      Botticelli the more impetuous. The grace and charm of Filippino
      are nowhere better shown than in the "Vision of St. Bernard,"
      in the church of the Badia at Florence--a work executed when
      he was about 23. A copy of it is in the Arundel Society's
      collection. The pictures in our Gallery which are indubitably
      by Filippino (namely, this picture and 927), show the same
      quiet beauty. Filippino was also employed upon important
      frescoes--in the Branacci Chapel, in Sta Maria Novella, and (at
      Rome) in Sta Maria Sopra Minerva; in these works he shows great
      skill in composition, appropriate action, and refined feeling.
      Filippino lived a busy and a blameless life; and the peace and
      beauty of his pictures were a reflection of his character.
      "Having been ever courteous, obliging, and friendly, Filippino
      was lamented," says Vasari, "by all who had known him, but more
      particularly by the youth of Florence, his native city; and
      when his funeral procession was passing through the streets,
      the shops were closed, as is done for the most part at the
      funerals of princes only."

This picture is identified by the arms of the Rucellai family below, as
the one described by Vasari as "executed in the church of San Pancrazio
for the chapel of the Rucellai family." After the suppression of the
church, it was removed to the Palazzo Rucellai until it was purchased
for the National Gallery.


294. THE FAMILY OF DARIUS.

  _Paolo Veronese_ (Veronese: 1528-1588). _See 260._

This picture--"the most precious Paul Veronese," says Ruskin, "in
the world"--is, according to another critic, "in itself a school of
art, where every quality of the master is seen in perfection--his
stately male figures, his beautiful women, his noble dog, and even his
favourite monkey, his splendid architecture, gem-like colour, tones
of gold and silver, sparkling and crisp touch, marvellous facility of
hand and unrivalled power of composition."[139] The glowing colour is
what strikes one first; and next the dignity, life, and ease of the
principal persons represented. It is a splendid example too of what the
historical pictures of the old masters were. The scene represented is
that of the Macedonian conqueror, Alexander the Great, surrounded by
his generals, receiving the submission of the family of the defeated
Persian King Darius; but in his treatment of the scene, Veronese makes
it a piece of contemporary Venetian life.

      "It is a constant law that the greatest men, whether poets or
      historians, live entirely in their own age.... Dante paints
      Italy in the thirteenth century; Chaucer, England in the
      fourteenth; Masaccio, Florence in the fifteenth; Tintoret,
      Venice in the sixteenth;--all of them utterly regardless
      of anachronism and minor error of every kind, but getting
      always vital truth out of the vital present.... Tintoret and
      Shakespeare paint, both of them, simply Venetian and English
      nature as they saw it in their time, down to the root; and it
      does for _all_ time; but as for any care to cast themselves
      into the particular ways and tones of thought or custom of past
      time in their historical work, you will find it in neither of
      them, nor in any other perfectly great man that I know of"
      (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. vii. §§ 19, 20).

Thus here Veronese simply paints a group of living Venetians of his
time,[140] dog,[141] monkey and all. Alexander, in red armour, is
pointing to his friend Hephaestion, who stands a little behind on his
left, and whom the captives had at first mistaken for the king. The
queen-mother implores his pardon, but Alexander tells her that she has
not erred, for that Hephaestion is another Alexander. The principal
figures representing these different characters are, however, all
contemporary portraits of the Pisani family,[142] it is said, for whom
the picture was painted, and in choosing this scene of Alexander in
one of his best moments Veronese was expressing his ideal of Venetian
nobility and refinement. "The greatest portrait painters," says
Ruskin,--"Titian, Veronese, Velazquez, and Raphael,--introduce the
most trenchant, clear, and complete backgrounds. Indeed, the first
three so rejoiced in quantity of accessories, that, when engaged on
important portraits, they would paint large historical pictures merely
by way of illustration or introduction. The priceless Veronese, 'The
Triumph of Alexander,' was painted only to introduce portraits of the
Pisani; and chiefly to set off to the best advantage the face of one
fair girl" (_Academy Notes_, 1857, p. 37). So too the dresses to which
the picture owes so much of its splendour, are the Venetian dresses
of the period. It may be interesting to remark that something of the
magnificence in the picture itself attaches also to the circumstances
of its painting. Veronese having been detained by some accident at
the Pisani Villa at Este, painted this work there, and left it behind
him, sending word that he had left wherewithal to defray the expense
of his entertainment. As the Pisani family ultimately sold it to the
National Gallery in 1857 for £13,650, Veronese's words were decidedly
made good. It may be interesting to add that the negotiations for its
purchase extended over nearly four years. Vast sums had been offered
for the picture in former centuries, and within the previous thirty
years sovereigns, public bodies, and individuals had all been competing
for it.

Some of the fame of the picture is due to its splendid preservation.
Rumohr speaks of it as "perhaps the only existing criterion by which
to estimate the original colouring of Paul Veronese." "The lakes, for
instance, in the crimson cuirass and dress of Alexander, which form
such a magnificent feature in the composition, are," says Sir Edward
Poynter, "as fresh as when first painted, as, indeed, is the whole
picture." James Smetham, in one of his eloquent letters, refers to this
work in 1858, in illustration of the enduring qualities of a painter's
"flying touches"--touches "destined to live in hours and moments when
_you_ have fled beyond all moments into the unembarrassed calm of
eternity":--

      Paul Veronese, three hundred years ago, painted that bright
      Alexander, with his handsome, flushed Venetian face, and that
      glowing uniform of the Venetian general which he wears; and
      before him, on their knees, he set those golden ladies, who are
      pleading in pink and violet; and there he is, and there are
      they, in our National Gallery; he, flushed and handsome--they,
      golden and suppliant as ever. It takes an oldish man to
      remember the comet of 1811. Who remembers Paul Veronese, nine
      generations since? But not a tint of his thoughts is unfixed,
      they beam along the walls as fresh as ever. Saint Nicholas
      stoops to the Angelic Coronation (26), and the solemn fiddling
      of the Marriage at Cana is heard along the silent galleries of
      the Louvre. ("Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are
      sweeter")--yes, and will be so when you and I have cleaned our
      last palette, and "in the darkness over us, the four-handed
      mole shall scrape."


205. OUR SAVIOUR AND THE VIRGIN.

  _Quentin Metsys_ (Flemish: 1460-1530).

      Metsys--whose name appears also in the forms Matsys, Massys,
      and Messys--was the first of the great Antwerp painters and
      the last who remained faithful to the traditions of the early
      Flemish school. The gold background here recalls the earliest
      Flemish pictures in the Gallery. "He retained," says Sir F.
      Burton, "the technical method introduced by the Van Eycks, but
      with a softer and broader handling, and with a wonderfully
      subtle modelling which gave perfect relief and rounding
      without dark shadows." Among the most important monuments of
      his skill are the large altar-pieces in the public galleries of
      Brussels and Antwerp respectively. There are in other galleries
      pictures similar to the two figures here before us. Metsys was
      also fond of depicting merchants or money-changers counting
      their gains--a subject imitated by Marinus van Romerswael
      (see 944). Metsys was a native of Antwerp, and a person of
      consequence in his native town. A romantic legend was formerly
      associated with his name. He was, it is said, a locksmith, but
      became a painter to obtain the consent of his wife's father
      to his marriage. Hence the inscription--_connubalis amor de
      mulcibre fecit Apellem_. But this story, it now appears,
      belongs to another Metsys, of Louvain. Our painter was twice
      married. Portraits of himself and his second wife are in the
      Uffizi at Florence.

These figures are remarkable for their serenity and dignity.
Characteristic also is the care lavished on the jewellery and edgings.
The figure of our Saviour somewhat resembles the "Salvator Mundi" of
Antonella da Messina (673)--the Italian painter who introduced the
Flemish influence to his country.


296. THE VIRGIN ADORING THE INFANT CHRIST.

  Florentine School (15th Century).
  _See also_ (p. xix)

      The authorship of this picture and of No. 781, which must
      be by the same hand, is one of the unsolved problems of art
      criticism. It has at different times been ascribed to Domenico
      Ghirlandajo, to Antonio Pollajuolo, to the school of Piero
      Pollajuolo, to Verrocchio, and to an unknown master in the
      school of the last-mentioned painter. Sir F. Burton said, "If
      not by Verrocchio, it must be the work of one of his most
      distinguished pupils." Sir Edward Poynter says, "This picture
      has all the characteristics of Andrea del Verrocchio's best
      work, and is probably by that painter; but the small number of
      works that can with certainty be ascribed to him renders the
      attribution uncertain." Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488) was
      the sculptor of the celebrated equestrian statue of Bartolommeo
      Colleoni at Venice, than which, says Ruskin, "I do not believe
      that there is a more glorious work of sculpture existing in
      the world" (_Stones of Venice_, vol. iii. ch. I, § 22). As
      a painter Verrocchio was for a time the master of Leonardo
      da Vinci, who painted the figure of an angel in Verrocchio's
      "Baptism of Christ" (in the Florentine Academy). "This figure,"
      says Vasari (ii. 255), "was so much superior to the other parts
      of the picture that, perceiving this, Verrocchio resolved
      never again to take pencil in hand." Whether this be so or
      not, Verrocchio left an enduring mark on the art of his time.
      "He delighted to paint the _putto_--the infant boy who is just
      beginning to rejoice in the use of his limbs--and with such
      a charm did he invest his creations of this kind, whether in
      sculpture or in painting, that," says Dr. Meyer, "it is not too
      much to say that he was the creator of that child-type which
      is so universal in the Italian art of the _Cinque-cento_."
      "Verrocchio," says E. Müntz, "is the plastic artist, deeply
      enamoured of form, delighting in hollowing it out, in fining it
      down; he has none of the literary temperament of a Donatello,
      a Mantegna, masters who in order to give expression to the
      passions that stir them, to realise their ideal, need a vast
      theatre, numerous actors, dramatic subjects. There is no
      _mise-en-scène_, no searching after recondite ideas, with
      Verrocchio. Most suggestive in spirit, he sowed more than he
      reaped, and produced more pupils than masterpieces. All there
      is of feminine, one might almost say effeminate, in Leonardo's
      art, the delicacy, the _morbidezza_, the suavity, appear,
      though often merely in embryo, in the work of Verrocchio"
      (_Leonardo da Vinci_, i. 23, 25). The one undoubted picture
      by Verrocchio is "The Baptism" above referred to. In the St.
      George's Museum at Sheffield there is a "Madonna Adoring"
      which has a marked affinity (especially in the Virgin's
      expression and attitude, and in her peculiar head-dress) to our
      picture. Ruskin, who purchased it in Venice from the Manfrini
      collection, ascribed it unhesitatingly to Verrocchio, and
      called it "a picture of extreme value, which teaches all I want
      my pupils to learn of art." For an excellent reproduction of
      it, and for a full discussion both of it and of our picture,
      the reader should consult Mr. W. White's _Principles of Art as
      illustrated in the Ruskin Museum_ (pp. 62-83). The angel on the
      left of this picture resembles the angel in the "Baptism," and
      the drawing of a head in the Uffizi at Florence by Verrocchio
      is a study for an angel. Dr. Richter, however, thinks the
      picture must be ascribed to a pupil of Verrocchio only, for
      "the artist of the Colleoni monument could not have been guilty
      of the abnormal extension given to the lower part of the
      Virgin's body. What should we have to say of the proportions of
      this figure if she were to rise from her seat?" (_Italian Art
      in the National Gallery_, p. 33). Morelli, on the other hand,
      on the strength of various technical details, ascribes the
      picture to Pollajuolo (_Italian Masters in German Galleries_,
      pp. 353-355).

This picture, whatever may be its authorship, is certainly one of
the most beautiful examples of Florentine art in the second half of
the fifteenth century. Of a very individual and fascinating type are
the faces of the two angels; their sweet and childlike loveliness
will haunt the memory of any visitor who has once studied them. Mr.
Monkhouse suggests that they may represent some member of the Medici
family: "It is at all events evident that the originals of these
beautiful children, however elevated by the refinement of the artist,
belonged to no common stock. Nor can there be any doubt that this
extremely elegant type, dainty to a degree unknown before, has a close
affinity to the ideal of Leonardo da Vinci." The angels' hands in our
picture are also very beautiful, though there is a touch of awkward
affectation in the disjointed bend of the little finger in the angel on
the left. The spectator will notice further the beautiful embroidery,
and the jewelled brooches worn both by this angel and by the Madonna.
The child holds a raspberry in one hand, some seeds of which he puts
to his lips. The expression of the mother is very beautiful in its
serene happiness of worship. Her head-dress is peculiar. "The light
golden hair is entirely off the forehead, with but little showing, and
is formed into a kind of pad, enclosed in an ornamental veil of thin
material, which being tied round upon the top of the head, lightly
forms a triangular curved peak upon the forehead, and hangs down
gracefully on either shoulder." The entire picture is, as Kugler says,
"a work of the most attractive character, from its careful finish, its
rich and transparent colour, and its great beauty of expression."


297. THE NATIVITY.

  _Il Romanino_ (Brescian: about 1485-1566).

      Girolamo Romani was a native of Brescia and the son of a
      painter; his family belonged originally to the small town of
      Romano, in the province of Bergamo: hence his name, "Romanino."
      Like Moretto (whose rival he was), he was little known outside
      the district of Brescia; but he studied at Venice, where he
      took Giorgione for his pattern. His best works are remarkable
      for a brilliant golden colouring, which is unfortunately not
      conspicuous in this picture. It pervades the fine altar-piece
      of the "Madonna Enthroned" in S. Francesco at Brescia. Another
      splendid altar-piece is to be seen in the museum at Padua.
      Among Romanino's frescoes may be mentioned the lively scenes he
      executed for the Castle of Malpaga. Copies of these are in the
      Arundel Society's collection.

Of this altar-piece--painted in 1525 for the church of St. Alessandro
at Brescia--Mr. Pater gives the following description: "Alessandro,
patron of the church, one of the many youthful patrician converts
Italy reveres from the ranks of the Roman army, stands on one side,
with ample crimson banner superbly furled about his lustrous black
armour; and on the other--St. Jerome, Romanino's own namesake--neither
more nor less than the familiar, self-tormenting anchorite.... But
the loveliest subjects are in the corners above--Gaudioso, Bishop of
Brescia, above St. Jerome; above Alessandro, St. Filippo Benizzi,
meek founder of the order of Servites to which that church at Brescia
belonged, with his lily, and in the right hand a book, and what a
book!... If you wish to see what can be made of the leaves, the vellum
covers of a book, observe that in St. Philip's hands. The metre? the
contents? you ask: What may they be? and whence did it come?--Out of
embalmed sacristy, or antique coffin of some early Brescian martyr,
or, through that bright space of blue Italian sky, from the hands of
an angel, like his Annunciation lily, or the book received in the
Apocalypse by John the Divine? It is one of those old saints, Gaudioso
(at home in every church of Brescia), who looks out with full face
from the opposite corner of the altar-piece, from a background which,
though it might be the new heaven over a new earth, is in truth only
the proper, breathable air of Italy. As we see him here, Saint Gaudioso
is one of the more exquisite treasures of our National Gallery. It
was thus that, at the magic touch of Romanino's art, the dim, early,
hunted-down Brescian church of the primitive centuries, crushed into
the dust, it might seem, was 'brought to her king,' out of those old
dark crypts, 'in raiment of needlework'--the delicate, richly-folded,
pontifical white vestments, the mitre and staff and gloves, and rich
jewelled cope, blue or green.[143] The face, of remarkable beauty,
after a type which all feel, though it is actually rare in art, is
probably a portrait of some distinguished churchman of Romanino's own
day: a second Gaudioso, perhaps, setting that later Brescian church to
rights after the terrible French occupation in the painter's own time,
as his saintly predecessor, the Gaudioso of the earlier century here
commemorated, had done after the invasion of the Goths. The eloquent
eyes are open upon some glorious vision. 'He hath made us kings and
priests!' they seem to say for him, as the clean, sensitive lips might
do so eloquently. Beauty and holiness had 'kissed each other,' as in
Borgognone's imperial deacons at the Certosa. At the Renaissance the
world might seem to have parted them again. But here certainly, once
more, Catholicism and the Renaissance, religion and culture, holiness
and beauty, might seem reconciled, by one who had conceived neither
after any feeble way, in a gifted person. Here at least, by the skill
of Romanino's hand, the obscure martyr of the crypts shines as a saint
of the later Renaissance, with a sanctity of which the elegant world
itself would hardly escape the fascination, and which reminds one how
the great Apostle St. Paul has made courtesy part of the content of the
Divine charity itself. A Rubens in Italy!--so Romanino has been called.
In this gracious presence we might think that, like Rubens also, he had
been a courtier" ("Art Notes in North Italy" in _New Review_, November
1890).


298. THE TWO ST. CATHERINES.

  _Ambrogio Borgognone_ (Lombard: about 1455-1523).

      Ambrogio Borgognone, called also Ambrogio da Fossano, the
      latter being the name of a town in Piedmont, was born at Milan.
      "It may have been Ambrogio's grandfather or great-grandfather
      who left the little Piedmontese town to settle at Milan; one of
      his ancestors had probably lived some time in Flanders (then
      called Borgogna by the Italians) and had thus received the
      surname of Borgognone. Ambrogio, who holds the same central
      place in the Milanese School of painting as Perugino in that
      of Perugia, and Francia in that of Bologna, was, according to
      my view, a pupil of Vincenzo Foppa the elder, and the real
      master of Bernardino Luini, the Raphael of the Milanese school.
      He remains in all his works a thorough Lombard" (Morelli's
      _German Galleries_, p. 419). The tenderness of feeling in
      this "Perugino of the Lombard School" is very marked. "The
      presentment of divine or holy personages, in calm serenity
      or in resigned suffering, accorded best," says Burton, "with
      his temperament. Even his colouring partakes of the pervading
      sentiment; the grey pallor of his heads is only modified, now
      and then, by the reddened eyelids of sorrow. In the Accademia
      at Pavia is a small picture, representing Christ bearing his
      cross, and followed by some Carthusian Brothers, which in
      simple pathos and deep religious meaning is perhaps without
      its equal in art." Ambrogio was distinguished as an architect
      no less than as a painter, and was employed on the façade of
      the Certosa of Pavia--a view of which building figures in the
      background of a picture by Ambrogio in our gallery (1410).

For St. Catherine of Alexandria, see under 693; for St. Catherine of
Siena, under 249. Each of them was proclaimed the spouse of Christ for
the love they bore him. And Borgognone here places them on either side
of the Madonna's throne. "Their names are inscribed on the haloes which
surround their heads. The Madonna--an exquisite example of the earlier
and purer Lombard type--sits enthroned on a raised seat, which may be
compared with that of the Blenheim Madonna and of many other Virgins in
our collection. The Child, erect on her knees and short-coated after
the earlier wont, is in the very act of placing the ring of His mystic
wedding on the timorous hand of St. Catherine of Alexandria. The Saint
herself, as the earlier and more famous of the two, stands at the right
hand of Our Lady. In her left she grasps the palm of martyrdom. As
Princess of Egypt the meek and beautiful lady wears a regal crown. Her
long wavy hair, of the type which we usually regard as Leonardesque,
but which Leonardo really acquired in Lombardy, is characteristic of
this saint, even in pictures of other schools (_cf._ the Umbrian,
No. 646). At her feet lies the wheel, with its conventional hooked
spikes, which was the instrument of her torture. On the Madonna's left
stands St. Catherine of Siena in her Dominican robes. Her face is pure
saintliness--a marvel of beauty; her left hand holds the ascetic white
lily of the Dominican order; her right the Madonna takes with a gentle,
and one might almost say consolatory gesture. Our Lady seems to comfort
her for her less favoured position; and if you look close you will see
that the infant Saviour holds in His left hand a second ring, which He
extends with childish grace towards the Nun of Siena" (Grant Allen in
_Pall Mall Magazine_, June-December 1895, p. 66).


299. PORTRAIT OF AN ITALIAN NOBLEMAN.

  _Moretto_ (Brescian: 1498-1555).

      In examples of the Brescian, as of the Veronese School, the
      National Gallery is very rich. "The dialect of the Brescians
      is very like that of their neighbours of Bergamo, but not so
      harsh and rugged (see 1203): the character of the people,
      too, is more lively and frank, more given to show and swagger
      (Bresciani spacca-cantoni). The Brescians, wedged in between
      the Veronese and Bergamese, unite, to some extent, the manly
      energy of the latter with the greater vivacity and pliancy of
      the former" (_Morelli_). The foundation of the Brescian School
      was laid by Vincenzo Foppa (see 729), whose pupil Il Moretto
      was. It is characteristic of the wide dispersion of the art
      gift in Italy that this Alessandro Bonvicino, nicknamed "Il
      Moretto,"--one of the greatest of portrait painters,--should
      have belonged entirely to a provincial city. He was born and
      educated at Brescia, where his father was a merchant; and
      with the exception of a very few pictures, he painted only
      for his native town and the province of Brescia, and it is
      there that nearly the whole work of his life is still to be
      found. Indeed he was little known beyond the frontiers of
      the Brescian district, and it is only during the last half
      century or so that his reputation has arisen. Moretto never
      studied in Venice; his development and genius are native, and
      he rivalled Titian himself in the stateliness and dignity
      of his figures. His altar-pieces are distinguished further
      by much gravity of feeling and sincerity of unostentatious
      religious feeling. The picture in our own gallery (625) is a
      good example. Others are to be found in the churches of his
      native town and in some foreign galleries. Among the best are
      the "Coronation of the Virgin" in SS. Nazzaro e Celso, Brescia;
      "St. Margaret" in S. Francesco, Brescia; "The Feast of the
      Pharisee," S. Maria della Pietà, Venice; "Madonna and Child,"
      Städel Institute, Frankfort; and "S. Giustina," Belvedere,
      Vienna. His nickname of "the Blackamoor" is particularly
      inappropriate to his style, which is distinguished for its
      silvery tones, "a cool, tender, and harmonious scale of colour
      which has a peculiar charm, and is entirely his own" (_Layard_,
      ii. 577). This harmony of colour, which became characteristic
      of the Brescian School, may be observed also in his rival,
      Romanino. Moretto is distinguished not more for his religious
      subjects than for his portraits, of which we possess two very
      beautiful specimens in the picture now before us, and in No.
      1025. He was the master of another great portrait-painter,
      Moroni of Bergamo (see 697), and works of the two are often
      confused. In addition to the charm of his harmonious colouring,
      Moretto's portraits are remarkable for the dignity he imparts
      to his subjects. "Moretto," says Morelli, "shows himself the
      higher artist of the two; his conception of a subject and
      his drawing are nobler and more elegant than those of his
      matter-of-fact scholar; but these intellectual qualities,
      which are not perceptible to every eye, do not always suffice
      to distinguish his weaker works from Moroni's best. In such
      cases the only means we have of determining the authorship is
      an exact and minute examination. The shape and expression of
      the hand, for instance, are very different in Moroni from what
      they are in Moretto. The hands of the latter, with pointed
      fingers, suggestive of the academy, are never so true to nature
      as those which Moroni can make when he chooses in drawing
      from life. Moretto's flesh-colours, too, have a delicate
      silver tone, while Moroni's, with their earth-like tints,
      are more realistic" (_German Galleries_, pp. 47-50, 169-171,
      396-403).[144]

This painter is conspicuous, says Lanzi (_History of Painting in
Italy_, Bohn's edition 1847, ii. 181), for his "skill in imitating
every kind of velvet, satin, or other cloth, either of gold or silver."
His portraits are remarkable, as is noticed under 1025, for their
poetic insight. He is not content with producing an obvious likeness
in the flesh; he strives at portraying or suggesting some spiritual
idea in all his sitters. These characteristics are conspicuous in
the present picture. Thus notice, first, the splendid brocades. Then
secondly, how the painter tells you not only that this was what the
sitter looked like, but what was his character. It is clearly the
portrait of some one who combined with an important position the
tastes of a _dilettante_, and who had an aspiring soul. On his cap is
a label inscribed ιου λιαν ποθω, which being literally interpreted
means "Alas, I desire too much!"--an inscription which accords with
the yearning upward gaze and the pose selected by the painter. But the
motto has also a punning reference. Reading the two first words as one,
it becomes ιουλιαν ποθω, "I desire Julia," or with a further pun on
the last word, "Julia Potho." We thus obtain a clue to the identity of
the sitter. The Potho or Pozzo family was well known at the time in
Brescia. Francesco dal Pozzo, 3rd Marquis of Ponderano (born 1494),
had as his first-born a daughter Julia. She became the wife of Giacomo
Gromo, Signor di Ternengo, who was a man of official status in Biella
in 1539, having to do with the fiscal arrangements of the district.
This may be indicated in our picture by the two coins of bronze and
gold, and the die or seal. The sandalled foot on the table (an antique
lamp?) may indicate his love of antiquities. "It is to be hoped, if
our picture be a portrait of Monsignor Giacomo Gromo di Ternengo, that
he had not long to wait before he became the devoted husband of Julia
Potho, for whom he so yearned, and whose favour he wore in his hat."
(W. Fred Dickes in _Athenæum_, June 3 and Aug. 26, 1893).[145]


300. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Cima da Conegliano_ (Venetian: 1460-1518).

      Some miles north of Venice, in the Friuli, rises the town
      of Conegliano, which, from its isolated and castled hill,
      overlooks the plain of Treviso. Cima, whose real name was
      Giovanni Battista, takes his title in art-history from the
      "cima," or castled "height," of his native place--a picturesque
      feature which he introduced, wherever it was at all possible,
      into his pictures. We see these towers of Conegliano in
      the present picture; and a window is opened in the large
      composition, No. 816, in order to give us a glimpse of a
      similar height. In his love of his native landscape is one of
      the principal charms of Cima's work. "Morning is his favourite
      time--morning among the hills; and then and there the painter
      enjoyed more happiness than any twilight gondola could give
      him. In our National Gallery are two examples of the Conegliano
      scenery, but the brilliant daylight that so distinguishes Cima
      is strangely absent" (Gilbert's _Landscape in Art_, p. 329).
      One of his best works is the "St. John the Baptist" in the
      church of S. Maria dell' Orto, Venice. "He is here painting,"
      says Ruskin, "his name-saint; the whole picture full of peace
      and intense faith and hope, and deep joy in light of sky and
      fruit and flower and weed of earth. The picture was painted
      for the church of Our Lady of the Garden, and it is full of
      simple flowers, and has the wild strawberry of Cima's native
      mountains gleaming through the grass.... He has given us the
      oak, the fig, the beautiful 'Erba della Madonna' on the wall,
      precisely such a bunch of it as may be seen growing at this
      day on the marble steps of that very church; ivy, and other
      creepers, and a strawberry plant in the foreground, with a
      blossom, and a berry just set, and one half-ripe, and one ripe,
      all patiently and innocently painted from the real thing, and
      therefore most divine.... His own Alps are in the distance,
      and he shall teach us how to paint wild flowers, and how to
      think of them" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch.
      vii. § 9; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. x. § 5; Oxford _Lectures on
      Art_, § 150; _Catalogue of the Educational Series_, p. 27). The
      charming landscape and fine colour of Cima are accompanied
      by earnestness of religious feeling, and a sense of peace and
      quiet, unmixed with any ascetism. "The painter," says Ruskin,
      of another of his pictures, "does not desire the excitement
      of rapid movement, nor even the passion of beautiful light.
      But he hates darkness as he does death. He paints noble human
      creatures simply in clear daylight; not in rapture, nor yet in
      agony. The unexciting colour will not at first delight you;
      but its charm will never fail, and you will find that you
      never return to it but with a sense of relief and of peace....
      Cima is not supreme in any artistic quality, but good and
      praiseworthy in all" (_Lectures on Landscape_, § 60; _Guide to
      the Academy at Venice_, p. 14). Cima is usually reckoned among
      the disciples of Giovanni Bellini, and is believed at one time
      to have superintended the workshop of that master.

In the background, on the right, are the towers of Conegliano; on the
left, the neighbouring castle of Colalto. There is something very
pretty in the way in which the earlier Venetian masters placed their
Holy Families in their own fields and amongst their own mountains
(compare _e.g._ the Madonna in the Meadow, No. 599), thus imagining
the Madonna and her child not as a far-away sanctity in the sky, but
as an actual presence nigh unto them, at their very doors.[146] "There
has probably not been an innocent cottage-home throughout the length
and breadth of Europe during the whole period of vital Christianity,
in which the imagined presence of the Madonna has not given sanctity
to the humblest duties, and comfort to the sorest trials of the lives
of women; and every brightest and loftiest achievement of the arts and
strength of manhood has been the fulfilment of the assured prophecy of
the poor Israelite maiden, 'He that is mighty hath magnified me, and
holy is his name'" (_Fors Clavigera_, 1874, p. 105).


479. THE SUN RISING IN A MIST.

  _J. M. W. Turner, R.A._ (British: 1775-1851).

For the circumstances under which this picture by Turner and the "Dido
Building Carthage" (498) hang not in the Turner Gallery but beside the
Claudes, see under 12.

This picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1807, and belongs
therefore to Turner's first period, which was distinguished by
"subdued colour and perpetual reference to precedent in composition."
This effect of sunrise in a mist was a favourite one with Dutch
painters, and Turner, when he went to the sea-shore, painted it in
the Dutch manner. A time was to come when he would paint the sun
rising no longer in a mist. Yet from the first, the bent of his own
mind was visible in his work. He paints no such ideal futilities as
are pointed out above in Claude's picture, but fishermen engaged in
their daily toil. One of his father's best friends was a fishmonger,
whom he often visited: "which gives us a friendly turn of mind towards
herring-fishing, whaling, Calais poissardes, and many other of our
choicest subjects in afterlife." He was the painter not of "pastoral
indolence or classic pride, but of the labour of men, by sea and land"
(_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. ix.).


498. DIDO BUILDING CARTHAGE.

  _J. M. W. Turner, R.A._ (British: 1775-1851).

From the technical point of view this is not one of Turner's best
pictures. It was exhibited in 1815, and belongs therefore to his first
period, when he had still not completely exorcised "the brown demon."
The picture, says Ruskin, "is quite unworthy of Turner as a colourist,"
"his eye for colour unaccountably fails him,"[147] and "the foreground
is heavy and evidently paint, if we compare it with genuine passages of
Claude's sunshine" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii.
§ 45, sec. ii. ch. i. § 13, ch. ii. § 18).

But there is a noble idea in the picture. Dido, Queen of Carthage,
surrounded by her people, and with plans and papers about her, is
superintending the building of the city which was to become the great
maritime power of the ancient world. "The principal object in the
foreground (on the left) is a group of children sailing toy boats.
The exquisite choice of this incident, as expressive of the ruling
passion which was to be the source of future greatness, in preference
to the tumult of busy stone-masons or arming soldiers, is quite as
appreciable when it is told as when it is seen,--it has nothing to do
with the technicalities of painting; a scratch of the pen would have
conveyed the idea and spoken to the intellect as much as the elaborate
realisations of colour. Such a thought as this is something far above
all art; it is epic poetry of the highest order" (_Modern Painters_,
vol. i. pt. i. sec. i. ch. vii. § 2).


564. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH SCENES FROM THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS.

  _Margaritone_ (Tuscan: 1216-1293).

      Margaritone, famous in his time (like so many of his
      successors) for painting, sculpture, and architecture
      alike, was a native of Arezzo, and was "the last of the
      Italian artists who painted entirely after the Greek (or
      Byzantine) manner," from which Cimabue and Giotto were the
      first to depart.[148] He died at the age of seventy-seven,
      "afflicted and disgusted (says Vasari) that he had lived to
      see the changes by which all honours were transferred to new
      artists." This picture being, according to the critics, the
      most important and characteristic picture of the artist still
      remaining, should, therefore, be carefully studied by those
      who are interested in tracing the history of art. Of the
      Greek manner, in which art was for so many centuries encased,
      one may notice, first, that there was no attempt to depict
      things like life. Art, as the phrase goes, was "symbolic," not
      "representative." Certain definite symbols, certain definite
      attitudes, were understood to mean certain things. Just as in
      earlier Greek painting white flesh, for instance, was taken to
      denote a woman, black or red flesh a man, so here such and such
      attitudes were accepted as meaning that the figure in question
      was the Virgin, and such and such other attitudes that it was
      the Christ. Secondly, these symbols were all expressive of
      various dogmas of the Church--of creeds and formulas peculiar
      to one sect rather than of spiritual truths common to all
      Christianity.

Both characteristics may be traced in almost every line of this
picture. For instance, the humanity of Christ is not yet even hinted
at, his divinity alone being insisted upon. Thus the young God is here
represented in the form of a man-child; erect, with the assumed dignity
of an adult, as he raises his hand to bless the faithful. With his left
hand he holds the roll in which are written the names of the faithful
saved: it is as a judge that he comes into the world. The Virgin again
is here shown as elect of God to be the mother of God: not as the
mother of Jesus, the mother of man's highest humanity. She wears on
her head the fleur-de-lys coronet, symbol of purity; and the glory, or
aureole, around her represents the acrostic symbol of the fish, the
Greek word for fish containing the initials of the several Greek words
meaning "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour." Outside this "Vesica" (or
"fish glory"), in the four corners, are four Jewish symbols (Ezekiel
i. 10), adopted as emblems of the four Evangelists--the Angel (St.
Matthew), the Ox (St. Luke), the Lion (St. Mark), and the Eagle (St.
John). So again, in the scenes on either side of the central piece
we see the same gloomy theology, in which the world is thought of
solely as a place made hideous with evils, where saints are boiled
by pagans, women slain by seducers, children devoured by dragons. By
help of such pictured deeds of hell, men were taught by the early
Church to "loathe this base world and think of heaven's bliss." The
first subject (on the spectator's left) represents the birth of Christ
in a cattle-shed; the second St. John the Evangelist, calm midst the
cauldron of seething oil, the martyr's uplifted hand expressing the
precept, "Pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."
The third subject depicts in a rude symbolic way incidents in the
life of St. Catherine--her beheading, her soul's reception by angels,
and the burial of her body by two angels on Mount Sinai. The fourth
subject shows St. Nicolas appearing suddenly to some sailors, whom he
exhorts to throw overboard a vase given by the devil. In the fifth is
St. John resuscitating the body of Drusiana, a matron who had lived
in his house previous to his departure, and whose bier he had chanced
to meet on his return to Ephesus. In the next subject St. Benedict,
founder of the Benedictine Order, is shown in the act of throwing
himself into a thicket of briars and nettles, as he rushes from his
cave to rid himself of the recollection of a beautiful woman he had
once met in Rome, and whose image now tempts him to leave his chosen
solitude. In the seventh, St. Nicolas liberates three innocent men;
and in the eighth is represented St. Margaret, patron saint of women
in childbirth, whom the devil in the form of a dragon confronts to
terrify into abnegation of her Christian faith. Unable to persuade her,
he devours her, but bursts in the midst, and by power of the Cross she
emerges unhurt. It is interesting to observe that the two consecutive
acts are here shown as co-existent: a thing frequently done, as we have
seen, in early art. Finally, another characteristic feature is the
introduction of the "grotesque" in the animals that support the throne
as a relief from the strained seriousness of the rest of the picture
(A. H. Macmurdo in _Century Guild Hobby Horse_, i. 21-28).

The picture, signed by the painter, was an altar-front in the church of
Santa Margherita at Arezzo. It is painted in _tempera_ on linen cloth
attached to wood, and even in Vasari's day its preservation was deemed
remarkable. "It comprises," he says, "many small figures, of better
manner than those of larger size, designed with more grace and finished
with greater delicacy; and this work deserves consideration, not
only because the little figures are so carefully done that they look
like miniatures, but also for the extraordinary fact that a picture
on canvas should have continued in such good preservation during 300
years" (i. 89).


565. THE MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Cimabue_ (Florentine: 1240-1302).

      Giovanni Cenni, called Cimabue, has been called the "Father of
      Modern Painting." He imitated the Byzantine style, says Vasari,
      but "improved the art and relieved it greatly from its uncouth
      manner." He did not entirely free himself from the dismal
      formalism of his predecessors, but he infused new life into
      the old traditional types. A contemporary of his was Niccola
      Pisano, whose work in the allied art of sculpture shows a more
      marked advance, and who perhaps really gave the new impulse
      which art received at this period--an impulse carried on in the
      field of painting by Cimabue's pupil, Giotto. Niccola Pisano,
      says Ruskin, "is the Master of Naturalism in Italy,--therefore
      elsewhere: of Naturalism and all that follows" (_Val d'Arno_,
      § 16). Well-authenticated pictures by Cimabue are the Madonna
      panel with angels in the Academy at Florence (formerly in the
      church of SS. Trinita), and the colossal Madonna still in the
      Rucellai chapel in S. Maria Novella. The latter is the picture
      of which the well-known story, referred to below, is told. Our
      picture, which is also mentioned by Vasari, was originally
      attached to a pilaster in the choir of S. Croce.[149]
      Cimabue also executed some of the frescoes in the Upper
      Church at Assisi: and at the time of his death was occupied
      on the mosaics in the tribune of the Duomo at Pisa. Copies
      of Cimabue's frescoes may be seen in the Arundel Society's
      Collection.

The changes which Cimabue introduced into the art of painting were
twofold. In the first place, his pictures show an _increase of
pictorial skill_. This picture has suffered much from time. Thus in the
Madonna's face, which was originally laid in green and painted over
thinly, time and restorations have removed this over-painting, and left
the green exposed (see also Duccio's 566). The green and purple of her
dress also have changed into a dusky tone; but even so, the advance
in pictorial skill may be seen in the shading of the colours, and the
attempt to represent the light and dark masses of the drapery, whereas
in earlier pictures the painters had been content with flat tints. But
the advance made by Cimabue was even more in spirit than in technical
skill. He combined the contemplation of the South with the action of
the North. He gave the populace of his day something to look at--and
something to love. "Is she not beautiful," asks a critic before this
picture, "in simplicity and solemn majesty? Is she not a real mother
with a half sad and foreboding wistful look that goes straight to the
heart?" Cimabue's Madonna is still a Mater Dolorosa--"our Lady of
Pain," but there is an attempt alike in her and in the child, and in
the attendant angels, to substitute for the conventional image of an
ideal personage the _representation of real humanity_. It was this
change that explains the story told of one of Cimabue's works, that
it was carried in glad procession, with the sound of trumpets, from
his house to the church, and that the place was ever afterwards called
"Borgo Allegro" (the joyful quarter)--a name which it bears to this
day. "This delight was not merely in the revelation of an art they
had not known how to practise; it was delight in the _revelation of a
Madonna whom they had not known how to love_" (_Mornings in Florence_,
ii. 48). In telling this story, Vasari adds that "they had not seen
anything better"; the rudeness and quaintness which are all that at
first sight are now discernible would then, it must be remembered, have
been unseen. We may recall the poet's protest against those who,

    Because of some stiff draperies and loose joints,
      Gaze scorn down from the heights of Raffaelhood
    On Cimabue's picture.

  MRS. BROWNING: _Casa Guidi Windows_.


566. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Duccio_ (Sienese: about 1260-1340).

      Duccio, the son of Buoninsegna, did much the same for the
      Sienese School as Cimabue and Giotto did for the Florentine.
      He was the first, that is to say, who, forsaking partly the
      conventional manner of the Byzantine School, endeavoured to
      give some resemblance to nature, and in religious subjects to
      bring down heaven to earth. "He retained the ancient formulas,
      destroying, however, their formalism by the inspiration of new
      life." The development of Sienese art under his influence was
      parallel to, yet distinct from, that in Florence. "His feeling
      is quite distinct; his pure, sweet, transparent colouring is
      his own; his type of beauty more graceful and more classical,
      and he loved more gentle curves, more oval faces and longer
      limbs. In these things he followed his own temperament, and
      by so doing determined the characteristics of the Sienese
      School" (Monkhouse: _In the National Gallery_, p. 17). In
      1285 Duccio was commissioned to paint a large Madonna for
      the church of S. Maria Novella at Florence. In 1308 he began
      the execution of his Maestà for the cathedral of Siena, of
      which some portions are now in the transept and others in the
      Opera del Duomo. The revelation that Duccio made of the new
      power of art was received, as was Cimabue's, with rapturous
      applause, and a portion of the famous picture just referred to
      was in 1310 carried in procession on a beautiful day in June
      to the Cathedral amidst the ringing of bells and the sounding
      of trumpets; the magistrates, clergy, and religious orders
      escorting it, followed by a multitude of citizens with their
      wives and families, praying as they went: the shops were closed
      and alms distributed to the poor. For that masterpiece Duccio
      received 16 soldi (8d.) the working day, paid to him in monthly
      instalments. The city, however, found him his materials,
      which, owing to the quantity of gold used (see 1139), raised
      the whole cost to 3000 gold florins. Works by Duccio are a
      speciality of the National Gallery, which has four of them to
      show, 566, 1139, 1140, and 1330. The present picture is the
      most important, and best illustrates the new departure made by
      Duccio.

The young Christ, for instance, instead of being depicted in the act
of priestly benediction (as in 564), is shown as a true babe, drawing
aside the veil that hides his Mother's face. In this little incident
one may thus see the tendency which was to lead to the representation
of the Mother and Child as a Holy _Family_ (the spectator must have
"charity of imagination" to ignore the green hue of the Madonna's
face, for reasons stated under 565). "A conception like this of the
Infant Saviour is not met with, so far as I know, in the whole range
of Byzantine art from the fifth century onwards. The relation of the
Child to his mother, as here represented, the gesture of childlike
love, contrasting with the expression of melancholy in her face,
which, perhaps, constitutes the principal charm of the picture--is
an innovation. This motive does not occur in the work of Niccola
Pisano, the great sculptor who had executed a famous work in the
cathedral of Siena some twenty years previously. We find it, however,
in contemporary Gothic sculpture of France; a very characteristic
example is in the South Kensington Museum, a charming little ivory of
the Madonna standing with the Child in her arms" (Richter's _Lectures
on the National Gallery_, p. 18). Above are seen the prophets, headed
by David their king, while on either side St. Catherine[150] and St
Dominic adore the vision of the mother of God. The Byzantine influence,
on the other hand, may be seen in the Greek type of feature and long,
slender fingers.


567. CHRIST ON THE CROSS.

  _Segna di Buonaventura_ (Sienese: painted 1305-1326).

A ghastly and conventional work by one of the early Sienese painters--a
pupil of Duccio.


568. THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.

  School of _Giotto_ (Giotto: 1266-1336).
  _See also_ (p. xix)

      Giotto di Bondone--great alike as a painter, a sculptor, and
      an architect--was the son of a shepherd in the country near
      Florence. One day when he was drawing a ram of his father's
      flock with a stone upon a smooth piece of rock, Cimabue (see
      565) happened to be passing by, and, seeing the lad's natural
      bent, carried him off to be a painter. Cimabue taught him all
      he knew, and in time the pupil eclipsed his master. Dante
      mentions this as an instance of the vanity of Fame: "Cimabue
      thought to hold the field in painting, but now Giotto has the
      cry." But another poet holds

    That Cimabue smiled upon the lad
      _At the first stroke which passed what he could do_,
    Or else his Virgin's smile had never had
      Such sweetness in't. All great men who foreknew
    Their heirs in art, for art's sake have been glad.

      MRS. BROWNING: _Casa Guidi Windows_.

      The earliest examples of his work extant are the frescoes
      forming the lower range in the Upper Church at Assisi. His
      frescoes of the virtues in the Lower Church are believed to
      belong to a later period. So great was his fame that in 1298
      he was sent for to do some work for the Pope. It was for him
      that Giotto sent as his testimonial the famous circle drawn
      with a brush, without compasses. "You may judge my masterhood
      of craft," Giotto tells us, "by seeing that I can draw a
      circle unerringly." (Hence the saying, "rounder than the O
      of Giotto.") After a short time in Rome, Giotto returned to
      Florence and painted the chapel of the Podestà, or Bargello, of
      Florence, which was rescued from destruction in 1841. Some of
      Giotto's work in it was restored. Here is his famous portrait
      of Dante (traced previous to restoration and published by the
      Arundel Society). To a later period belong his frescoes in the
      church of Santa Croce. In 1303 Giotto was called to decorate
      the walls of the chapel of the Annunziata dell' Arena at
      Padua. This he did with a series of compositions which are the
      greatest monument of his genius. It was during the execution
      of this work that Dante visited Padua, being entertained by
      his friend the painter. "Thus went Giotto, a serene labourer,
      throughout the length and breadth of Italy. He engaged himself
      in other tasks at Ferrara, Verona, and Ravenna, and at last
      at Avignon, where he became acquainted with Petrarch. Then
      passed rapidly through Florence and Orvieto on his way to
      Naples, where he received the kindest welcome from the good
      King Robert. The King, ever partial to men of mind and genius,
      took especial delight in Giotto's society; and Giotto (says
      Vasari), who had ever his repartee ready, held him fascinated
      at once with the magic of his pencil and pleasantry of his
      tongue. Returning to Florence, Giotto was appointed chief
      master of the works of the Duomo then in progress. He designed
      the Campanile, modelled the bas-relief for the base of the
      building, and sculptured two of them with his own hand. He died
      full of honour and at the zenith of his strength. He was buried
      in the cathedral, at the angle nearest his campanile; and thus
      the tower, which is the chief grace of his native city, may be
      regarded as his own sepulchral monument." Only those who have
      seen Giotto's wall paintings at Assisi, Padua, and Florence can
      form any true conception of his greatness. It is pointed out
      below in what respects his work was remarkable and important
      for his time. It has also an abiding value in itself. "In nine
      cases out of ten," says Ruskin, "the first expression of an
      idea is the most valuable: the idea may afterwards be polished
      and softened, and made more attractive to the general eye; but
      the first expression of it has a freshness and brightness, like
      the flash of a native crystal compared to the lustre of glass
      that has been melted and cut. Giotto was not, indeed, one of
      the most accomplished painters, but he was one of the greatest
      men who ever lived. He was the first master of his time, in
      architecture as well as in painting; he was the friend of
      Dante, and the undisputed interpreter of religious truth, by
      means of painting, over the whole of Italy. The works of such
      a man may not be the best to set before children in order to
      teach them drawing; but they assuredly should be studied with
      the greatest care by all who are interested in the history of
      the human mind" (_Giotto and his Works in Padua_). Copies of
      many of his works are in the Arundel Society's Collection.

It was Cimabue who first attempted to represent action as well as
contemplation. Giotto went farther, and represented the action of
daily life. "Cimabue magnified the Maid; and Florence rejoiced in
her Queen. But it was left for Giotto to make the queenship better
beloved, in its sweet humiliation." This picture is not by the master
himself, but it is characteristic--in its greater _naturalness_ and
resemblance to human life--of Giotto's work. Cimabue's picture (565)
is felt in a moment to be archaic beside it. Giotto is thus the first
painter of domestic life--the "reconciler of the domestic with the
monastic ideal, of household wisdom, labour of love, toil upon earth
according to the law of Heaven, with revelation in cave or island,
with the endurance of desolate and loveless days, with the repose of
folded hands that wait Heaven's time." The corresponding development in
the direction of greater naturalness which Giotto--himself a country
lad brought up amongst the hills and fields--introduced in the art of
_landscape_ painting cannot, unfortunately, be illustrated from the
National Gallery (see on this point Edinburgh _Lectures on Architecture
and Painting_, ch. iii.). But a third development--the introduction,
namely, of _portraiture_--is well seen in the Heads of St. John and St.
Paul (276), a work in which Giotto's influence is very marked. There
is no longer a mere adoption of conventional types: these apostles
are individual portraits. "Before Cimabue, no beautiful rendering of
human form was possible; and the rude or formal types of the Lombard
and Byzantine, though they would serve in the tumult of the chase,
or as the recognised symbols of creed, could not represent personal
and domestic character. Faces with goggling eyes and rigid lips might
be endured, with ready help of imagination, for gods, angels, saints,
or hunters--or for anybody else in scenes of recognised legend; but
would not serve for pleasant portraiture of one's own self, or of the
incidents of gentle, actual life. And even Cimabue did not venture
to leave the sphere of conventionally reverenced dignity. He still
painted--though beautifully--only the Madonna, and the St. Joseph,
and the Christ. These he made living--Florence asked no more: and
'Credette Cimabue nella pintura tener lo campo.' But Giotto came from
the field; and saw with his simple eyes a lowlier worth. And he painted
the Madonna, and St. Joseph, and the Christ,--yes, by all means, if you
choose to call them so, but essentially,--Mamma, Papa, and the Baby.
And all Italy threw up its cap--'ora ha Giotto il grido' (now Giotto
has the cry)." A fourth development which the art of painting owes to
Giotto may be well seen in this picture. Notice the pretty passages of
_colour_, as, for instance, in the dresses of the angels. "The Greeks
had painted anything anyhow,--gods black, horses red, lips and cheeks
white; and when the Etruscan vase expanded into a Cimabue picture, or a
Tafi mosaic, still--except that the Madonna was to have a blue dress,
and everything else as much gold on it as could be managed--there was
very little advance in notions of colour. Suddenly Giotto threw aside
all the glitter, and all the conventionalism; and declared that he
saw the sky blue, the tablecloth white, and angels, when he dreamed
of them, rosy. And he simply founded the schools of colour in Italy"
(_Mornings in Florence_, pt. ii.).


569. AN ALTAR-PIECE.

  _Orcagna_ (Florentine: about 1308-1386).

      "From the time of Giotto to the end of the 14th century Orcagna
      stands quite pre-eminent even among the many excellent artists
      of that time. In sculpture he was a pupil of Andrea Pisano;
      in painting, though indirectly, a disciple of Giotto. Few
      artists have practised with such success so many branches
      of the arts. Orcagna was not only a painter and a sculptor,
      but also a worker in mosaic, an architect and a poet. His
      importance in the history of Italian art rests not merely
      on his numerous and beautiful productions, but also on his
      widespread influence, transmitted to his successors through
      a large and carefully trained school of pupils. In style as a
      painter Orcagna comes midway between Giotto and Fra Angelico;
      he combined the dramatic force and realistic vigour of the
      earlier painting with the pure brilliant colour and refined
      unearthly beauty of Fra Angelico. His large fresco paintings
      are works of extreme decorative beauty and splendour, composed
      with careful reference to their architectural surroundings"
      (Middleton). His real name was Andrea di Cione, but he
      was called by his contemporaries Orcagna, a corruption of
      Arcagnuolo, the Archangel. "An intense solemnity and energy
      in the sublimest groups of his figures, fading away as he
      touches inferior subjects, indicates that his home was among
      the _archangels_, and his rank among the first of the sons
      of men" (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iii. § 8).
      Orcagna's father was a goldsmith, and the result of his early
      training in the use of the precious metals may be traced in
      the extreme delicacy and refined detail of his principal
      works in sculpture. He used to note his union of the arts
      by signing his pictures "the work of ... sculptor," and his
      sculptures "the work of ... painter." As a sculptor and
      architect, the principal work of Orcagna is the church of
      Or San Michele at Florence. The great marble tabernacle is
      "one of the most important and beautiful works of art which
      even Italy possesses." Vasari also attributes to his design
      the Loggia dei Lanzi in the Piazza della Signoria, but this
      attribution cannot be upheld. As a painter, the chief works
      of Orcagna are the frescoes in the Strozzi chapel in S. Maria
      Novella. The "Paradise" is the finest of these compositions--a
      work full both of grace and of majesty. These frescoes were
      executed in 1350. In 1357 Orcagna painted the altar-piece in
      the same chapel, and of about the same date is the altar-piece
      now before us. The grand frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa
      ascribed by Vasari to Orcagna are now attributed to other hands.

"In San Piero Maggiore," says Vasari in his life of Orcagna, "he
executed a rather large picture, the 'Coronation of the Virgin.'" This
is the picture now before us. The principal portion is numbered 569.
The other nine pictures (570-578) were originally portions of the
same magnificent piece of decoration. A model of the church for which
it was painted is held by St. Peter (among the saints adoring on the
spectator's left). This altar-piece, though a handsome piece of church
furniture, is not so favourable a specimen of the master's power as
are the works referred to above. Nevertheless these panels are full of
varied interest.

A certain quaint uncouthness should not blind us to Orcagna's wealth
of expressive detail. Thus, "in the sensitive cast of the Mother's
countenance, and in the refined pose of her figure, there is a rare
degree of eloquence, such as silently bespeaks a modesty which would
shun, a humility which would disallow, any sort of self-adornment.
Her Lord, to whose will she submits herself, is no less monumental in
dignity of combined power and tenderness. And in the celestial band
below, in the maidens that play and sing at the Mother's feet, despite
their quaint little almond eyes, there is a _naïveté_ of expression, a
simplicity and animation unequalled at so early a date. In particular
she who, singing behind the harpist, generously spends her soul in
impassioned songs, while others, agreeable to nature's truth, are
singing regardless of their song, interested only in what is around.
Again, in that dual company of holy men and women sitting about the
throne, reverence stills every feature, and a saintly singleness of
purpose keeps each eye as they look in loving adoration on Him whose
dying bought their soul's salvation, or as they lean towards Her
whose human heart petitioned them to Paradise" (A. H. Macmurdo in
_Century Guild Hobby Horse_, ii. 34). In the _Hobby Horse_ (a different
publication, No. 1, 1893), a musical expert calls attention to the
instruments shown by Orcagna. Thus "in the central compartment note the
portative organ, at that time in familiar use, with its gimlet-shaped
keys all of one light colour, and apparently, even in that early date,
chromatic in disposition. Five large drone pipes may be recognised,
from their being out of scale with the melody pipes. The second
instrument in the angelic band is the mediæval harp, the comb holding
the wrest, or tuning, pins being held here in an animal's mouth. A
third angel is furnished with a cither, also a favourite mediæval
instrument. It is ornamented in ebony and ivory, and has a plectrum
guard inserted in the belly, as in a modern mandoline. The fourth angel
has a viol of a clumsy form; it took another 200 years to arrive at the
graceful outline of the violin. The fifth has a psaltery. One angel has
a bagpipe; the chaunter or melody pipe has eight holes, the same number
the highland bagpipe has now." Variations of these instruments may be
noted in the subordinate pictures (A. J. Hipkins). An expert in another
art calls attention to the beauty of the patterns on the dresses of the
central figures, on the ground upon which the angels kneel and stand,
and also on the stuff hung at the back of the throne (Sydney Vacher:
_Italian Ornaments from brocades and stuffs found in pictures in the
National Gallery_).


570-2. THE TRINITY, WITH ANGELS ADORING.

_Orcagna_ (part of the altar-piece, 569).

One may notice here one of Orcagna's limitations. "He was unable to
draw the nude. On this inability followed a coldness to the value of
flowing lines, and to the power of unity in composition; neither could
he indicate motion or buoyancy in flying or floating figures" (_On the
Old Road_, i. § 78). Compare especially the flying angels in the two
little pictures 571 and 572, with such figures as those by Botticelli
(1034), and it will be seen at once how inferior Orcagna's knowledge
was.


573-5. THE NATIVITY, ADORATION, AND RESURRECTION.

_Orcagna_ (part of the altar-piece, 569).

These panels are very rude and "conventional": nothing can be more
absurd, for instance, than the sleeping sheep and shepherds at the
top of the Nativity; but they are interesting, if only by comparison
with later pictures of the same subjects. Such a comparison shows
how constant the traditional ways of representing these events were,
and how individual choice was shown in beautifying the traditions.
From this point of view the Nativity is specially interesting. "This
beautiful little picture," says Mr. Hodgson, R.A., "is a good example
of the simplest and most perfectly symbolical treatment of the subject.
In design and composition the painter has thought only how to convey
the story with the utmost clearness and simplicity. It is what it was
intended to be, a Scripture story made visible to those who could not
read. Naturalism, _i.e._ the actual representation of the aspect of
nature, is not thought of, no more at least than was necessary to make
the meaning of the painted symbol equivalent to that of the word: rock
for rock, ox for ox, and ass for ass. The degree of naturalism aimed
at in such scenes can be tested pretty accurately by the treatment of
the nimbus. A flat circular expanse of gold inserted into a picture
must necessarily be destructive of all illusion--it is treated as
a symbol, a thing non-existent, but as a necessary traditional
observance. When naturalism was aimed at, the nimbus was looked upon
as an actual existing corona of golden light which the saint carried
about with him, and it was drawn in perspective, according to the
turn of his head" (_Magazine of Art_, 1890, p. 39). Turn next to the
Nativity by Piero della Francesca (908)--a picture painted 100 years
later. The symbolism is already mixed up with some conscious striving
after objects beautiful in themselves. To a generation later still
belongs Botticelli's "Nativity" (1034). It is full, as we shall see,
of doctrinal symbolism, but it strikes the imagination also by the
pomp and pageantry of the angelic host, and appeals to the senses by
its flowing lines and gorgeous colourings. Yet in all these pictures
of the Nativity there are certain fixed elements. One feature never
absent is the introduction of the ox and the ass, suggested by a text
from Habakkuk, iii. 4, "He shall lie down between the ox and the ass."
A second point is that Joseph "sits apart, apparently weary or in
meditation. Great care seems to have been taken to suggest that he in
a certain sense held aloof, and was no participator in the interest
of the scene; it was feared, perhaps, that were he to exhibit joy and
surprise, it might convey the idea of paternity; he is always a mere
impassive spectator." The scene of the Nativity is in the earliest
pictures always represented as a cavern; a grotto at Bethlehem is to
this day revered as the actual spot. In Margaritone's picture (564)
we have a bare cave in the rock. In Orcagna's the cave remains, but a
wooden portico or shed is added to shelter the Virgin and her Child.
Next the cave disappears altogether, but the shed remains (_e.g._ 908,
1034).

The Adoration of the Magi (574) was a favourite subject with the
Italian painters, for the three kings and their attendants gave them an
excuse for the most elaborate and picturesque detail. In the picture
before us Orcagna was restricted by the size and shape of the panel;
but even making the necessary allowances on this score, we see that we
have here a relatively simple treatment of the theme. Orcagna finds
room, however, for "a perfect menagerie. There are the sheep, with a
howling dog above; and below, an evil, badger-like dog, evidently much
ashamed of himself and his deeds, is sneaking along into a hole in the
rock. As for the amiable ox sitting upon his haunches, with his tail
turned round like a cat's, and the shy ass, showing the whites of his
eye: are they not delightful beauties?" (_The Beasts of the National
Gallery_, by Sophia Beale, in _Good Words_, July 1895). For the rest,
Orcagna's "Adoration" is limited to the necessary characters. By way
of contrast, look at Filippino Lippi's (1033), in which some seventy
figures are introduced, and the whole picture is alive with gay
colours and picturesque incident. Other representations of the same
subject in our Gallery are by Fra Angelico (582), Foppa (729), Dossi
(640), Peruzzi (167), and Veronese (268). A study of similarities and
differences in these various examples will disclose an immense number
of coincidences. The type survives, but each feature is the subject of
elaborate variations.


576. THE THREE MARIES AT THE SEPULCHRE.

  _Orcagna_ (part of the altar-piece, 569).

Mary Magdalen, Mary the mother of James, and Salome stand beside the
vacant tomb (Mark xvi. 1); on the opposite side are two angels: "he
is risen, he is not here, behold the place where they laid him." This
subject, common with the earliest painters, is afterwards seldom met
with.


577. THE ASCENSION.

  _Orcagna_ (part of the altar-piece, 569).

This was a subject in which Giotto made a new departure. None of the
Byzantine or earliest Italian painters ventured to introduce the entire
figure of Christ in this scene. They showed the feet only, concealing
the body; according to the text, "a cloud received Him out of their
sight." This form of representation may be seen in some manuscripts in
the British Museum. In the Arena at Padua, Giotto broke away from this
tradition and introduced the entire figure of Christ; succeeding also
in conveying the idea of ascending motion very skilfully. Orcagna's
picture is modelled on the new type fixed by Giotto.


578. THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

  _Orcagna_ (part of the altar-piece, 569).

The descent of the Holy Spirit is represented above; and below, the
multitude confounded, every man hearing his own language.


579. THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST.

  School of _Taddeo Gaddi_ (Florentine: 1300-1366). _See_ 215.
  _See also_ (p. xix)

In the centre is John the Baptist, baptizing Christ; on the left St.
Peter, on the right St. Paul. In the pictures for the _predella_
(the step on the top of the altar, thus forming the base of the
altar-piece) is a saint at either end; and then, on the left, (1) the
angel announcing the Baptist's birth, (2) his birth, (3) his death,
(4) Herod's feast, and (5) Herodias with John the Baptist's head in a
charger. The picture must have been the work of an inferior scholar;
but it is interesting to notice that this attempt to tell a consecutive
story in his picture, as in an epic poem, instead of a fastening on
some one turning-point in it, as in a drama, is characteristic of
early art (see under 1188). Notice further in the central picture "how
designedly the fish in the water are arranged: not in groups, as chance
might rule in the actual stream, but in ordered procession. All great
artists ... have shown this especial delight in ordering the relations
of self-set details" (A. H. Macmurdo in _Century Guild Hobby Horse_, i.
71).


579a. PARTS OF AN ALTAR-PIECE.

  School of _Taddeo Gaddi_ (Florentine: 1300-1366). _See_ 215.
  _See also_ (p. xix)

These three panels formed the _cuspidi_ of the Baptism of Christ (579).
In the centre is the Almighty, on the left the Virgin, on the right
Isaiah, holding a scroll with the words (in Latin), "Behold a virgin
shall conceive."


580, 580a and b. THE ASCENSION OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST.

_Jacopo Landini_ (Florentine: about 1310-1390).

      Jacopo Landini was born at Prato Vecchio, in the Casentino;
      whence his common designation, Jacopo da Casentino. This
      picture was formerly in the Church of St. John at the painter's
      native place. He was a pupil of Taddeo Gaddi, and the master of
      Spinello Aretino.

Another of the altar-pieces (_cf._ 579, above), which aimed at giving
the whole story of some subject, and thus recall the time when sacred
pictures were (as it has been put) a kind of "Scripture _Graphic_."
In the _predella_ pictures (580_b_) are, on the left, (1) St. John
distributing alms and baptizing, (2) his vision of Revelation in the
island of Patmos, (3) his escape from the cauldron of boiling oil;
and then, as the subject of the principal picture, his ascension to
heaven, for, "according to the Greek legend, St. John died without
pain or change, and immediately rose again in bodily form and ascended
into heaven to rejoin Christ and the Virgin." In the central picture,
Mr. Gilbert finds "a glimpse of true landscape feeling in the brown
platform of rock, carefully gradated in aerial perspective, in the
colouring, coarse though it be, and especially in the long dark
sea-line beyond" (_Landscape in Art_, p. 184). In the other small
pictures and in the pilasters are various saints, and immediately over
the central picture are (1) the gates of hell cast down, (2) Christ
risen from the dead, (3) the donor of the picture and his family, being
presented by the two St. Johns. Of the _cuspidi_, or upper pictures
(580a), the centre piece is a symbolic representation of the Trinity
(seen best on a large scale in 727); at the sides are the Virgin and
the Angel of the Annunciation, divided as explained under 1139.


581. A GROUP OF SAINTS.

  _Spinello Aretino_ (Tuscan: about 1333-1410).
  _See also_ (p. xix)

      Spinello di Luca Spinelli is commonly called Spinello Aretino,
      from Arezzo, his native town. As is the case with most of the
      early Tuscan painters, he is seen to greater advantage in his
      frescoes than in his panel pictures. Some fragments of frescoes
      by him are in our Gallery (1216). Important frescoes may be
      seen in the sacristy of S. Miniato above Florence (the life of
      St. Benedict); in the Campo Santo at Pisa (the histories of SS.
      Efeso and Potito); and in the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena (scenes
      in the life of Pope Alexander III.). Spinello "represents the
      spirit of Giotto at the close of the fourteenth century better
      than any other painter of the time." He belonged to a family
      of goldsmiths. It is interesting to note on an altar-piece
      executed by him for Monte Oliveto (now in the Gallery of
      Siena), that the names of the carver and gilder of the frame
      are inscribed as conspicuously as that of Spinello the painter
      of the picture. He was the pupil of Jacopo di Casentino.

Certainly not an adequate, and perhaps not an authentic, specimen
of the master. The saints are St. John the Baptist, St. John the
Evangelist, and St. James the Greater.


582. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

  _Fra Angelico_ (Florentine: 1387-1455). _See_ 663.

For the subject see notes on No. 574. Angelico's picture is remarkable
for the picturesque and sparkling costumes. "The art of Angelico,"
says Ruskin, "both as a colourist and a draughtsman, is consummate; so
perfect and beautiful, that his work may be recognised at any distance
by the rainbow play and brilliancy of it. However closely it may be
surrounded by other works of the same school, glowing with enamel and
gold, Angelico's may be told from them at a glance, like so many pieces
of opal lying among common marbles" (_Stones of Venice_, vol. i. app.
15).


683. THE ROUT OF SAN ROMANO.

  _Paolo Uccello_ (Florentine: 1397-1475).

      This painter was originally brought up as a goldsmith, and
      was one of the assistants of Lorenzo Ghiberti in preparing
      the first pair of the celebrated gates of the Baptistery. It
      is doubtful with whom he learnt to paint. He introduced new
      enthusiasms and interests into the art, as explained below
      in the notes on this picture. The majority of his works have
      perished. He was employed principally in Florence, where
      frescoes by him may be seen in one of the cloisters of S. Maria
      Novella. At Padua he also executed some works which are said
      by Vasari to have been greatly admired by Andrea Mantegna.
      Other works by him are referred to below. The present picture
      is, however, the most attractive of his extant productions. He
      seems to have been a man of original character, and Vasari's
      life of him is very good reading. The biographer's statement
      about his poverty seems to be exaggerated, for documents exist
      showing that he lived in a house which he had purchased.

A picture of great interest in itself, both from a technical and from
a moral point of view, and also deserving of note in the history of
painting. (1) It shows the beginning of scientific "perspective"
(_i.e._ the science of representing the form and dimensions of things
as they really _look_, instead of as we conceive them by touch or
measurement to _be_); the painter is pleased with the new discovery,
and sets himself, as it were, the hardest problem in perspective
he can find. Note the "foreshortening" of the figure on the ground
(objects are said to be "foreshortened" when viewed so that we see
their breadth, and not their length--for example, the leg of Titian's
Ganymede in No. 32). So devoted was Paolo to his science that he became
(says Vasari) more needy than famous. His wife used to complain to her
friends that he sat up all night studying, and that the only answer she
ever got to her remonstrances was, "What a delightful thing is this
perspective!" The sculptor Donatello is also said to have remonstrated
with our painter: "Ah, Paolo, with this perspective of thine, thou
art leaving the substance for the shadow." Paolo was fond, too, of
geometry, which he read with Manetti. He had another and a softer
passion: he was so fond of birds that he was called Paul of the Birds
("Uccelli"--his family name being Paolo di Dono), and he had numbers
of painted birds, cats, and dogs in his house, being too poor to keep
the living creatures. (2) This picture is remarkable, secondly, as the
earliest Italian work in the Gallery containing portraits, and the
first which endeavours to represent a contemporary event.

Our picture has hitherto been supposed to represent the battle of
Sant' Egidio (1417) in which Carlo Malatesta and his nephew Galeazzo
were taken prisoners by Braccio di Montone, lord of Perugia. Other
battle-pieces belonging to the same series are in the Uffizi and the
Louvre respectively; and it has been shown by Mr. Herbert P. Horne
(_Monthly Review_, October, 1901) that these are the three pictures
of the "Rout of San Romano," painted by Uccello for the palace of
Cosimo de' Medici, as described in an inventory of 1492. The principal
figure is Niccolo Maurucci da Tolentino, the leader of the Florentine
forces, directing the attack against the Sienese at San Romano in 1432.
"He is represented on horseback fully armed, except for his helmet,
with the baton of command in his right hand. He wears on his head a
rich _cappuccio_, or head-dress, of gold and purple damask; while his
bascinet, covered with purple velvet, is carried by his helmet-bearer,
who rides by his side [the 'young Malatesta' of previous descriptions].
Above the figure of Tolentino waves his standard powdered with his
impress, the 'groppo di Salomone,' a knot of curious and intricate
form, in a white field." The impress may be seen again, as Mr. Horne
points out, in the memorial portrait of Tolentino by Andrea del
Castagno in the Cathedral of Florence.

From the moral point of view, we may see in this picture, says Ruskin,
what a gentleman's view of war is, as distinguished from a boor's,
with mean passion and low fury on every face. "Look at the young
Malatesta,[151] riding into the battle of Sant' Egidio. His uncle
Carlo, the leader of the army, a grave man of about sixty, has just
given orders for the knights to close: two have pushed forward with
lowered lances, and the _mêlée_ has begun only a few yards in front;
but the young knight, riding at his uncle's side, has not put his
helmet on, nor intends doing so yet. Erect he sits, and quiet, waiting
for his captain's order to charge; calm as if he were at a hawking
party, only more grave; his golden hair wreathed about his proud white
brow, as about a statue's" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch.
viii. § 9). Another point to notice is the type this picture affords
of "the neglect of the perfectness of the earth's beauty, by reason of
the passions of men. The armies meet on a country road beside a hedge
of wild roses; the tender red flowers tossing above their helmets, and
glowing between the lowered lances." In like manner, adds Ruskin, in
the Middle Ages, when men lived for safety in walled cities, "the whole
of Nature only shone for man between the tossing of helmet-crests; and
sometimes I cannot but think of the trees of the earth as capable of a
kind of sorrow, in that imperfect life of theirs, as they opened their
innocent leaves in the warm spring-time, in vain for men; and all along
the dells of England her beeches cast their dappled shade only where
the outlaw drew his bow, and the king rode his careless chase" (_Modern
Painters_, vol. v. pt. vi. ch. i. § 6).


585. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Umbrian School_ (15th century).
  _See also_ (p. xix)

This picture has been dethroned by Sir Edward Poynter from the high
estate which it occupied in the catalogues of former directors, wherein
it figured as a portrait by Piero della Francesca (see 665) of Isotta
di Rimini, the wife of Sigismondo Malatesta. Our portrait "bears little
resemblance," says the official catalogue, "to the well-known medallion
portraits of that lady by Matteo de' Pasti." It is, says Dr. Richter,
"an indifferent production, inferior to the master in outline, as well
as in the execution of the ornamental parts. It may have been done
by any forgotten painter of the time" (_Italian Art in the National
Gallery_, p. 17). "The curious stippled execution has little or nothing
in common with the subtle technique of Piero" (Claude Phillips in the
_Academy_, September 28, 1889). It is, however, interesting for its
study of fashions of the time. Notice the high forehead and the sleeves
and ornaments of the lady's gown.


586. MADONNA AND CHILD ENTHRONED.

  _Zenobio Macchiavelli_ (Florentine: 1418-1479).

      This picture was formerly ascribed to Fra Filippo Lippi. It is
      now given to Macchiavelli, who was a pupil of Benozzo Gozzoli,
      and perhaps also of Lippi. A signed altar-piece by this painter
      is in the Museo Civico at Pisa; another is in the Louvre; and
      a third is in the National Gallery of Ireland. The latter is
      "a picture of singular interest," says the catalogue, "proving
      this master to have been one of the first of his time; full of
      delicacy and refinement of feeling, and the heads beautifully
      drawn."

                Madonna and her babe,
    Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood
    Lilies and vestments and white faces.

      BROWNING: _Fra Lippo Lippi_.

A characteristic production of a school which, "orderly and obedient
itself, understood the law of order in all things, which is the
chief distinction between art and rudeness. And the first aim of
every great painter is to express clearly his obedience to the law
of Kosmos, Order, or Symmetry" (_Fors Clavigera_, 1876, p. 292).
The four angel-faces on one side of the Madonna are matched by four
on the other; the bishop and black monk on one side-compartment, by
the saint and black nun on the other. Similarly at the foot of the
throne the two angels are arranged symmetrically, one facing one way,
the other the other. "You will at first be pained by the decision of
line, and, in the children at least, uncomeliness of feature, which
are characteristic, the first, of purely descended Etruscan work; the
second, of the Florentine School headed afterwards by Donatello. But
it is absolutely necessary, for right progress in knowledge, that you
begin by observing and tracing decisive lines; and that you consider
dignity and simplicity of expression more than beauty of feature"
(_Fors Clavigera_, 1875, p. 308).


589. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Fra Filippo Lippi_ (Florentine: about 1406-1469). _See_ 666.

Combined with Lippi's realism of representation, "there is also an
unusually mystic spiritualism of conception. Nearly all the Madonnas,
even of the most strictly devotional schools, themselves support the
child, either on their knees or in their arms. But here the Christ is
miraculously borne by an angel" (_Fors Clavigera_, 1875, p. 308).


590. A PIETÀ.

  _Marco Zoppo_ (Bolognese; painted 1471-1498).

      This unattractive painter was born in Bologna, and became a
      pupil in the school of Squarcione at Padua. His work shows also
      the influence of Cosimo Tura at Florence.

It is interesting to compare the various representations of the Dead
Christ, or Pietà, which may be seen in the National Gallery. The
subject, it may first be noted, was treated in very different ways.
"Convention did not early harden down into fixity of composition or
crystallise into rigid forms. A certain plasticity of imagination was
permitted from the beginning; a certain indefiniteness of nomenclature
and scope remained habitual to the end" (Grant Allen: see also Mrs.
Jameson's _History of our Lord_, ii. 226). Sometimes the subject of
the "Pietà" is the Mater Dolorosa, weeping over the body of the dead
Saviour, and attended by saints (266, 1427) or angels (180). At other
times the dead Saviour is supported by angels only (22, 219, 602), or,
as in this picture, by saints. Sometimes the dead figure is represented
lying at full length (22, 180); at other times it is a half-figure
showing above a tomb or ledge (219, 266, 602, 590, 1427). Still more
interesting is a comparison between these pictures for the illustration
it gives of the different sentiment of different painters or schools.
The picture before us is hard and dry; that of Crivelli (602) is full
of tenderness. With some painters it is the physical horror, the bodily
distortion that appeals to them in this subject. With others it is the
pity and the sorrow (as, pre-eminently, in Francia's, 180).


591. THE RAPE OF HELEN.

  _Benozzo Gozzoli_ (Florentine: 1420-1498). _See_ 283.
  _See also_ (p. xix)

The earliest picture in the Gallery which was painted for domestic
pleasure, not religious service. One of the earliest also in which a
classical subject is attempted. It probably formed the end of a coffer
or _cassone_,[152] such as were often given for wedding presents, and
was no doubt a commission to the artist for that purpose. Hence the
choice of subject (which has been variously given as the Rape of Helen
and the Rape of the Venetian Brides), and the (surely intentional)
comic extravagance of the drawing: the bridegroom takes giant's strides
in lover's eagerness, and the ships scud along with love to speed them.
The ludicrous unreality of the rocks and trees, contrasted with the
beautifully painted flowers of the foreground, is very characteristic
of the art of the time (_cf._ 283 and 582). Rocks, trees, and water are
all purely "conventional" still; and "the most satisfactory work of the
period is that which most resembles missal painting, that is to say,
which is fullest of beautiful flowers and animals scattered among the
landscape, in the old independent way, like the birds upon a screen.
The landscape of Benozzo Gozzoli is exquisitely rich in incident of
this kind" (Edinburgh _Lectures on Architecture and Painting_, ch.
iii.).


592. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

  _Filippino Lippi_[153] (Florentine: 1457-1504). _See_ 293.
  _See also_ (p. xix)

This picture, with its immense retinue of followers, is "full of life
and swarms with incident and expression, from the dignified gravity of
St. Joseph to the fantastic humour of the dwarf. No two figures are
alike, except perhaps the two shepherds who are approaching from the
right, and they are different from all the rest" (Monkhouse).


593. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Lorenzo di Credi_ (Florentine: 1459-1537).

      Lorenzo di Andrea Credi has been called by Morelli the Carlo
      Dolci of the fifteenth century. His pictures are sweet and
      gentle, but lack force or inspiration. His colouring tends
      towards crudeness; his careful execution and finish are
      remarkable. "He was a very careful and laborious workman,
      distilling his own oils and grinding his own colours; and when
      he was working he would suffer no movement to be made," says
      Vasari, "that would cause dust to settle on his pictures."
      What Vasari adds about him may be partly seen in this and the
      companion picture (648), with their bright colouring and pretty
      distances: "His works were finished with so much delicacy
      that every other painting looks but just sketched and left
      incomplete as compared with those from his hand." Lorenzo
      was the son and grandson of goldsmiths, and was placed when
      quite a child under the tuition of Verocchio (296), and was
      still working under him at the age of twenty-one, content with
      the modest salary of one florin (about £2) a month. Like his
      master, he was a sculptor as well as a painter, and Verocchio
      in his will requested that Lorenzo might finish his famous
      statue (at Venice) of Bartolommeo Colleoni. (The Venetians,
      however, gave it to Alessandro Leopardo to finish.) Lorenzo was
      one of the few men who lived through the Renaissance without
      swerving from the religious traditions of earlier art, and even
      without being much influenced by his fellow-pupils--though in
      his grave and sweet Madonnas there is yet a suspicion of the
      sidelong look, half sweet, half sinister, and of the long,
      oval face, which distinguish Leonardo. He was a disciple of
      Savonarola, and burnt his share of pictures in the famous
      bonfire. "His will bears witness to his contrition. After
      having assured the future of his old woman-servant, to whom
      he left his bedding and an annuity in kind; after having made
      certain donations to his niece and to the daughter of a friend,
      a goldsmith; he directed that the rest of his fortune should go
      to the brotherhood of the indigent poor, and that his obsequies
      should be as simple as possible" (Müntz: _Leonardo da Vinci_,
      i. 29). Lorenzo is not represented so well in the National
      Gallery as in the Louvre and at Florence. His "Nativity" in
      the Florentine Academy is perhaps his best work. Lorenzo's
      range was limited, and "Holy Conversations" or "Madonnas" were
      his most frequent subjects. A peculiarity of them is the large
      head and somewhat puffy and clumsy forms he gives to the Infant
      Christ.


594. THE "HOLY MONEY-DESPISERS."

  _Emmanuel_ (Byzantine: about 1660).

This picture is the earliest in the Gallery (with the exception of
the Greek portraits, see 1260)--not in order of time, but in order of
artistic development. It is a genuine Byzantine picture, an example,
therefore, of the art which prevailed in Italy from the sixth century
down to about 1250, and the influence of which survived even when the
Italian painters had developed an art of their own. The Byzantine style
of painting is distinguished by its conventionality and its constancy.
It was the recognised thing that such and such a subject should be
treated in such and such a way and no other. There is a Byzantine
Manual of Painting in a manuscript of the eleventh century in which
instructions are given not only as to the subjects to be represented,
but as to the costume, age, and lineaments of the characters. An art
of this kind was naturally unchanging. This picture is probably only
200 years old, but if it had been painted 800 years ago, or if it had
been ordered only the other day from the monks of Mount Athos, little
difference of style would be perceptible. It is signed in Greek "The
hand of Emmanouel, the priest, son of John," a painter living in Venice
about the year 1660.

The picture is conventional in its choice of subject--the saints Cosmas
and Damian being one of the subjects recognised in Byzantine art.
They were martyrs of the fourth century--patron saints of medicine,
which they practised without fees--hence their title, the "holy
money-despisers." They are here receiving the Divine blessing. The
picture is conventional also in its treatment. Thus the attitude of
the hand is the recognised symbol whereby to express that a figure is
speaking. So, too, the background is formed by a golden plain, which
is meant to represent the air or the sky. The dark blue semicircle
surrounding the bust of our Saviour, above the two heads of the saints,
has more or less the form of the horizon, and is meant to represent the
heaven in which Christ dwells (Richter's _Italian Art_, etc., pp. 5-7).


595. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Unknown_ (Venetian School: 15th-16th century).

One of the many pictures in the Gallery from which the so-called
"æsthetic" or "high art" gowns of the present day have been copied.
Formerly ascribed to Battista Zelotti, a disciple of Paul Veronese.


596. THE ENTOMBMENT OF CHRIST.

  _Marco Palmezzano_ (Umbrian: 1456-1537).

      This painter was a fellow-countryman and pupil of Melozzo of
      Forli, who studied under Piero della Francesca, and to that
      extent Marco is a member of the Umbrian School. Like his
      master, Marco studied geometry and perspective. He was skilful
      in perspective, "but he scarcely ever ridded himself of a
      certain dryness and hardness, and his draperies are in general
      angular in the folds, cutting up instead of indicating the
      forms beneath" (Burton). His pictures abound in Forli.

This picture, originally of a semicircular shape, was the lunette of
an altar-piece, painted in 1506 for the Cathedral of Forli, and now in
the Gallery of that town. To the spectator's right is San Mercuriale,
first bishop of Forli, holding the Guelphic banner of the church; on
the left, San Valeriano with the standard of Forli.


597. "ST. VINCENTIUS FERRER."

  _Francesco del Cossa_ (Ferrarese: about 1435-1485).

      Cossa was a contemporary of Cosimo Tura (772), with whom
      he exhibits close affinities of style. "But while Tura was
      fantastic, and inclined to the lavish use of decoration,
      Cossa, with severer views of his art, sought to give dignity
      and grandeur to his figures, and kept ornamentation within its
      proper bounds" (Official Catalogue). "It may be added that
      Cossa, though 'severer' in one sense, viz. that he saw more
      clearly and kept more strictly within the true limits of fine
      art, had more amenity than Tura; his decorative instinct was
      more refined, his sense of grace less crude. He was also a
      sweeter, finer, colourist" (Monkhouse). Cossa worked at Ferrara
      with other artists for Duke Borso, and among other works he
      executed some of the frescoes for the Schifanoia Palace. These
      have been copied by the Arundel Society. In 1470 Cossa removed
      to Bologna, where his best works are to be seen. The finest
      of them is the "Virgin and Child with St. Petronius" in the
      Pinacoteca--"a work of singular grandeur."

"Our beautiful panel is, for its size, as characteristic and fine a
specimen of the master as exists. The painting throughout is of fine
quality, the modelling and expression of the head admirable, the colour
strong and fine, but soft withal, and the abundant detail executed
with great skill and patience, but kept in due subordination. The
strange background, with its fantastic erections, half architecture
half rock, is of less beauty, but equally characteristic of the
artist" (Monkhouse: _In the National Gallery_, p. 167). The picture,
once ascribed to Marco Zoppo, has been now recognised as the central
panel of an altar-piece by Cossa, of which the wings are in the Brera
at Milan, and the predella is in the Picture Gallery of the Vatican.
The Dominican represented has at various times been supposed to be
St. Dominic himself, St. Vincentius Ferrer, and St. Hyacinth. The
predella pictures are of scenes in the life of St. Hyacinth, who
therefore is probably the subject of our panel also. He was a member
of the Dominican Order (whose habit he wears), a Pole by birth, and a
missionary in Russia. St. Vincentius Ferrer was a Spaniard of Valencia,
who in 1374, at the age of 17, entered the Dominican Order, died in
1419, and was canonised in 1455.


598. ST. FRANCIS WITH THE "STIGMATA."

  _Filippino Lippi_ (Florentine: 1457-1504). _See 293._

      St. Francis, the founder of the Franciscan Order of monks (the
      Black Friars), was the great apostle of Works, whilst St.
      Dominic, the founder of the Dominican Order (White Friars),
      was the great apostle of Faith. It was the teaching of these
      two orders that gave the impetus to the church building, from
      which grew the art revival at Florence in the thirteenth
      century. "The gospel of works, according to St. Francis, lay
      in three things. You must work without money, and be poor.
      You must work without pleasure, and be chaste. You must work
      according to orders, and be obedient." And so truly did he in
      his own works exemplify the life of Christ, that, according to
      the legend of the time, he received also in his own person the
      wounds (or "stigmata") of the Crucified One--here visible on
      his hands. ("Take my yoke upon you"; or "Take up the cross and
      follow me.") "His reception of the 'stigmata' is, perhaps, a
      marvellous instance of the power of imagination over physical
      conditions; perhaps an equally marvellous instance of the
      swift change of metaphor into tradition; but assuredly, and
      beyond dispute, one of the most influential, significant, and
      instructive traditions possessed by the Church of Christ."

The saint is here represented in glory; choirs of singing angels
encompass him; for now "the wounds of his Master are his inheritance,
the cross--sign not of triumph, but of trial, is his reward" (_Mornings
in Florence_, i. 8, 13; iii. 64). Inscribed on the picture below are
some lines from a Latin hymn to St. Francis, exhorting others to follow
him, and to advance as he did the standards of their king ("Let those
who depart out of Egypt follow him, and be united to him, in whom the
standards of the King come forth for us in clear light").

The floating angels recall those by Botticelli, but the pupil's work
is not here so good: these angels seem after all to be standing,
Botticelli's to be indeed floating in thin air. Lippi, too, learnt
no doubt from him the goldsmith's work, seen here in the indented
background to the picture.


599. THE MADONNA OF THE MEADOW.

  _Giovanni Bellini_ (Venetian: 1426-1516). _See 189._
  _See also_ (p. xix)

A very charming little picture, marred only by a certain insipidity
in the expression of the Madonna--which contrasts markedly alike with
the pathetic type of Bellini's early Madonnas (_e.g._ No. 288), and
with the more stately type which he afterwards adopted (as in the
altar-piece in the Academy at Venice). "The landscape is altogether
interesting, and will well repay a long examination. The incident of
the bird and the serpent should not be missed, and the Eastern sheep
with the long ears and its stately attendant in the white burnous
should be noted as an attempt to give some Oriental character to the
scene" (Monkhouse: _In the National Gallery_, p. 220). "The exquisite
opaline purity of its daylight, the delicacy and finish of every
detail, the walls and towers of the little town serene in the rays of
morning, and the mountain ranges, pure and lovely in definition--all
these graces make the picture one of the joys of art" (Gilbert's
_Landscape in Art_, p. 330).

This picture has at different times been given several different
attributions, of which the most cautious was "School of Bellini." In
earlier editions of the Official Catalogue it was ascribed to Basaiti
(see 281); but now (1898) to Bellini. Sir Edward Poynter refers in
support of this alteration to the close resemblance of the present
picture to a signed work by Bellini in the Giovanelli Palace at
Venice, and, as regards the background, to No. 812 in our gallery.
Sir Walter Armstrong (_Notes on the National Gallery_, p. 24) draws
attention to the similarity in the baby's hands here and in 224, and
would ascribe both pictures to Catena. The correct settlement of
disputed points of attribution like this is highly important for the
history of painting, but meanwhile the very fact of such disputes has
a useful significance, as showing what is meant by the old "schools"
of painting. Individual peculiarities are only discovered by minutest
examinations; but beneath such differences there are in each school
similarities of treatment and conception which come from common
traditions and common teaching, and which cause critics of equal
intelligence to attribute the same pictures to different masters of the
school.


600. THE BLIND BEGGAR.

  _J. L. Dyckmans_ (Flemish: 1811-1888).

      Josef Laurens Dyckmans, a pupil of Wappers, was for some time
      Professor of the Academy of Painting at Antwerp.

"A blind old man is standing in the sunshine by a church door: before
him is a young girl, who is holding out her hand for alms to the
passers-by; an old lady coming from the church is feeling in her pocket
for a sou; some other figures are seen in the porch at their devotions
before a crucifix. Painted at Antwerp, signed _J. Dyckmans_, 1853"
(Official Catalogue). "The picture is painted in a tone of colour
exceedingly low, but the whole is worked to an extreme finish; the
heads in fact are elaborated with a care such as Denner's pictures
show. In these days of light and glowing harmonies the eye is at once
struck with the abstinence from colour which the artist has made a
cardinal principle in the execution of his work" (_Art Journal_, July
1864). This picture was presented by Miss Jane Clark, who paid 900
guineas for it.


602. A "PIETÀ."

  _Carlo Crivelli_ (Venetian: painted 1468-1493).

      Crivelli is one of the most individual of painters, and no
      collection is so rich in his works as the National Gallery. He
      was a native of Venice, and his work shows marked affinities
      with the school of Padua. Of his life, little is known except
      that in, or shortly before, the year 1468 he settled at Ascoli
      in the Marches of Ancona. In that neighbourhood he seems to
      have spent the rest of his life, in the employment mainly
      of various religious fraternities. He thus lived somewhat
      outside the artistic world of his time, a fact which serves
      to explain the rather conservative character of his art.
      Thus he adhered to the _tempera_ medium. He adhered also to
      the Byzantine traditions of the old Venetian School with its
      fondness for the "ancona," or altar-piece consisting of many
      single figures each in its separate compartment, and for gilt
      and silvered ornaments in high relief. There is, too, a vein
      of affectation in his pictures which contrasts strongly with
      the naturalistic tendency in contemporary Venetian art. Owing
      to a little touch of vanity in the painter we are able to date
      many of his pictures. For it is known that he was knighted in
      1490, and so proud was "Sir Charles" of his new honour that he
      signed all subsequent pictures "Carlo Crivelli, Knight." No.
      724 is probably the first he finished after the reception of
      the coveted honour. His love of accessories, and especially
      of fruit, will strike every visitor; and so also will the
      brilliance of his colouring and the unerring, if somewhat
      harsh, exactness of his outlines. For tender pathos the present
      picture is remarkable. His range was, as we shall see, somewhat
      limited. He seldom attempted compositions on any large scale,
      and his subject pictures are few: No. 739 is one of the best
      of them. He excelled rather in single figures, and in these
      we find expressed, "in quaint combination, morose asceticism,
      passionate and demonstrative grief, verging on caricature,
      occasional grandeur of conception and presentment, knightly
      dignity, feminine sweetness and tenderness mingled with demure
      and far-fetched grace" (Sir F. Burton). Up to the end of the
      eighteenth century Crivelli's works were still to be found in
      their original places, in the churches and convents of Eastern
      Italy, where they attracted little attention. The suppression
      of the convents after the age of the Revolution brought them
      into notice, and English collectors purchased them in large
      numbers. In recent years this appreciation has steadily
      increased. The large altar-piece, 788, was bought in 1868 for
      £3360. At the Dudley sale in 1892, the altar-piece, now in the
      Berlin Museum, fetched £7350.

This little picture is part of an altar-piece formerly in a church at
Monte Fiore, near Fermo: other portions are at Brussels. The picture is
signed, but not dated; the piece of red watered silk which hangs over
the edge of the tomb is characteristic of Crivelli's earlier period.
Its prettily pathetic sentiment and brilliant tone make it one of the
painter's most attractive works. For some remarks on the subject, see
under 590.


621. THE HORSE FAIR.

  _Rosa Bonheur_ (French: 1822-1899).

      Mdlle. Rosalie Bonheur, usually called Rosa Bonheur, the most
      vigorous and spirited of French animal painters, was born at
      Bordeaux. Her parents had a sharp struggle for existence. Her
      mother taught music; her father--Raymond Bonheur--drawing. He
      was a painter of some ability, and all the children inherited
      an artistic bent. When the family removed to Paris, Rosa's
      precocious talents rapidly developed. They lived next door
      to a tavern which was a house of call for diligences and
      market-waggons, and there she found inexhaustible material
      for animal studies. Her brother, Auguste, became an animal
      and landscape painter of repute; another brother, Isidore,
      an animal sculptor; her sister, Juliette, who married M.
      Peyrol, was also a well-known painter. In the Salon of 1848
      the whole family exhibited. From the common purse, when they
      were children, a goat was bought for a model, which they used
      to carry up to their humble studio. Another place of study
      with Rosa Bonheur was the Abattoir du Roule, "where, with
      characteristic fortitude, she not only controlled her natural
      repugnance to scenes of slaughter, but overcame all the disgust
      which attended the 'brutalité grossière' of the people employed
      there. Even at this early period she studied not only the
      outward aspects and anatomical construction of the creatures
      she painted, but their passions and tempers. Among the friends
      to whom she always referred with grateful pleasure as helpful
      in these days was Paul Delaroche, who called at the humble
      family quarters on a sixth floor, and was not sparing in his
      admiration." Rosa had first been apprenticed to a dressmaker,
      but her love of art impelled her to give up this occupation,
      and she succeeded in contributing to the family exchequer by
      the sale of copies made in the Louvre. In 1841, when only 19,
      she exhibited two pictures in the Salon. Her mother died in
      1833, and in 1845 her father married again; from that time
      forward she lived an independent life. Her famous "Labourage
      Nivernais," now in the Luxembourg, was painted in 1848. This
      greatly increased her reputation, and she was able to secure
      for her father the post of director of the Women's Painting
      School, established by the Government in Paris. His death
      in the following year affected her greatly, and she did not
      exhibit again until 1853, when "The Horse Fair," _Le Marché
      aux Chevaux_, appeared. Through engravings and photographs
      this work made the name of Rosa Bonheur famous throughout the
      world. She visited Spain and Scotland, and painted pictures of
      both those countries. Her permanent residence was an estate
      at By in the forest of Fontainebleau, which she purchased in
      1855. There ten years later she was personally invested by the
      Emperor of the French with the Cross of the Legion of Honour,
      an honour confirmed in later years by President Carnot. A
      still higher compliment was paid her in 1870-1871, when her
      studio and residence were spared from any intrusion, by the
      special order of Prince Frederick Charles. For many years she
      regularly attended horse fairs both in France--such as she has
      here depicted--and abroad, adopting as a rule men's costume in
      order to carry out her studies and purchases without attracting
      attention. Mr. Frith relates how when he and Sir John Millais
      went to lunch with her in 1858, they were met at the station by
      a carriage, the coachman appearing to be a French Abbé. "The
      driver wore a black broad-brimmed hat and black cloak, long
      white hair with a cheery rosy face. It was Rosa Bonheur, who
      lives at her château with a lady companion, and others in the
      form of boars, lions, and deer, who serve as models." Gambart,
      who was of the party, "repeated to her some words of praise
      given by Landseer to a picture of hers, then exhibiting in
      London. Her eyes filled with tears as she listened." "When one
      sees this young artist," wrote a journalist in 1852, "small of
      stature and of delicate appearance, standing by a huge canvas,
      he would be tempted to think that her powers had not attained
      the full height of their ambition; but when he comes to make
      note of the straight, resolute lines of the artist's features,
      her full square forehead, her thick hair, cut as short as that
      of a man, and her dark, quick flashing eyes, he ceases to
      fear. He then realises that it is not reckless audacity which
      impels her forward in her work, but a greatness of soul and a
      consciousness of her strength." "Few artistic careers," says
      her brother-in-law, "have been more active, more brilliant, or
      more characterised by simple and quiet dignity, or perhaps, on
      the whole, more happy. Having known during her youngest days
      the terrible inconvenience of poverty, Rosa Bonheur raised
      herself, by her talent alone, to a position of independence
      and fortune. She was privileged to enjoy at the same time
      the charms of fame and the sweets of obscurity." She never
      abandoned the retired habits of life she loved, and she was
      able to continue her studies to the end.

"The magnificent stallions with their powerful forms pass before us
at a trot, kicking up the dust under their feet. Full of life and
movement, and thoroughly imbued with realism, but of a beautiful and
noble realism. The composition is admirable, and brings out finely the
energy and spirit of the horse. The scene represents the horses as
having just reached the market, and as being in the act of falling back
to re-form for their proper places. The fine trees in the background
of the picture, under which, upon a rising ground, the dealers and
buyers take up their position, are obscured on the left by the haze,
and by the clouds of dust raised by the trotting horses; in the
background, too, at the extreme left, is seen the small dome of the
Salpêtrière. The _Marché aux Chevaux_ of Paris was at that time situate
in the Boulevard l'Hôpital, not far from the Orleans railway; but in
consequence of changes, the market has lost the picturesque aspect it
wore in 1853. One looks in vain now for the large trees which then
shadowed it, and the bold earth, covered in places by short dusty
grass and broken up by the trampling of the horses.... A mingling of
art and truth is very obvious in 'The Horse Fair.' The irregular order
of the horses, their different movements bringing into play all their
muscles; the different spots of their coats, so disposed as to set off
one another, and furnishing at the same time a charming variety to the
eye; the powerful dappled Perche horses, which pass in the foreground
and constitute the centre of the picture, with the groups of black[154]
and white horses which rear themselves up on their hind feet--all this
shows a profoundly skilful arrangement, and results in a grand and
harmonious _ensemble_. Yet the first impression which this picture
gives is that of a scene taken from the life, and of intense realism.
The freedom and breadth of the execution are equal to the beauty of
the composition. The vigorous touch, and the powerful drawing also
help to give this picture a spirited character and masculine vigour in
perfect harmony with the subject it represents" (René Peyrol in the
_Art Annual_ on Rosa Bonheur). Ruskin, while bearing his testimony to
the artist's power, calls attention to "one stern fact concerning art"
which here detracts from her full success. "No painter of animals ever
yet was entirely great, who shrank from painting the human face; and
Mdlle. Bonheur _does_ shrink from it.... In the 'Horse Fair,' the human
faces are nearly all dexterously, but disagreeably, hidden, and the one
clearly shown has not the slightest character. Mdlle. Bonheur may rely
upon this, that if she cannot paint a man's face, she can neither paint
a horse's, a dog's, nor a bull's. There is in every animal's eye a dim
image and gleam of humanity, a flash of strange light through which
their life looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them,
and claims the fellowship of the creature, if not of the soul.[155]
I assure Mdlle. Bonheur, strange as the words may sound to her, after
what she has been told by huntsmen and racers, she has never painted a
horse yet. She has only painted trotting bodies of horses" (_Academy
Notes, etc._ 1858, p. 32).

The original of this famous composition--probably the best-known and
most popular animal picture of our epoch--was exhibited in the Salon
in 1853. The painter had been engaged on it for a long time, and had
made innumerable studies for it. She used to call it "her Parthenon
Frieze." It was sold to Mr. Gambart, the picture-dealer, who brought it
to England. It made a great sensation in London, and afterwards went
on a provincial tour. It then travelled to America where it was sold,
and is now in the New York Museum. Rosa Bonheur painted for Gambart two
repetitions of it on a smaller scale. One of these, the picture before
us, was bought by Mr. Jacob Bell, who bequeathed it to the nation in
1859. It was the first work by a living foreign painter to be admitted
to the Gallery.


623. MADONNA AND CHILD ENTHRONED.

  _Girolamo da Treviso_ (Venetian: 1497-1544).

      Girolamo, the son and pupil of Piermaria Pennachi, was born
      at Treviso. He painted at Venice, Genoa, Trent, Faenza, and
      Bologna, at which latter place several of his frescoes and
      paintings remain. Between the years 1535 and 1538 he returned
      to Venice and became intimate with Titian, Sansovino, and
      Aretino. "In 1542," says Vasari, "he repaired to England, where
      he was so favoured by certain of his friends, who recommended
      him to the king (Henry VIII.), that he was at once appointed to
      the service of that monarch. Presenting himself to the English
      sovereign accordingly, Girolamo was employed, not as painter,
      but as engineer, and having given proofs of his ability in
      various edifices, copied from such as he had seen in Tuscany
      and other parts of Italy, the king admired them greatly.
      Nay, furthermore, his majesty rewarded the master with large
      gifts, and ordained him a stipend of four hundred crowns a
      year, giving him at the same time opportunity and permission
      to erect an honourable abode for himself, the cost of which
      was borne by the king." Girolamo had, however, to erect also
      some bastions at Boulogne, and there "he was struck by a
      cannon-ball, which came with such violence that it cut him in
      two as he sat on his horse. And so were his life and all the
      honours of this world extinguished together, all his greatness
      departing in a moment." His works are now scarce. No. 218 in
      this gallery may be the copy made by Girolamo from Peruzzi's
      drawing, No. 167.

This picture, formerly the altar-piece of the Boccaferri chapel in
S. Domenico at Bologna, is signed by the painter and is mentioned by
Vasari (iii. 287) as "the best of his works: it represents the Madonna
with numerous saints (Joseph, James, and Paul), and contains the
portrait of the person by whom the painter was commissioned to execute
the work." Girolamo, who, as we have seen, was a man of travel, "did
not remain faithful to the tradition of art as professed at Venice
and Treviso, and might be called rather a forerunner of the eclectic
schools.... The head of St. Paul is apparently copied from Raphael's
picture of St. Cecilia in Bologna. In the types of other figures, in
the colouring and in the landscape, we perceive the influence of Dosso
Dossi and of Garofalo" (Richter's _Italian Art, etc._ p. 87).


624. THE INFANCY OF JUPITER.

  _Giulio Romano_ (Roman: 1492-1546).

      Giulio Pippi, called "the Roman," was born at Rome, and was
      Raphael's favourite pupil; to him Raphael bequeathed his
      implements and works of art. But the master could not also
      bequeath his spirit, and in Giulio's works (such as 643 and
      644, which, however, are now attributed to a pupil), though
      "the archæology is admirable, the movements of the actors are
      affected and forced, and the whole result is a grievous example
      of the mannerism already beginning to prevail" (Woltmann and
      Woermann: _History of Painting_, ii. 562). "Raphael worked
      out the mine of his own thought so thoroughly, so completely
      exhausted the motives of his invention, and carried his
      style to such perfection, that he left nothing unused for
      his followers.... In the Roman manner the dramatic element
      was conspicuous; and to carry dramatic painting beyond the
      limits of good style in art is unfortunately easy.... For all
      the higher purposes of genuine art, inspiration passed from
      his pupils as colour fades from Eastern clouds at sunset,
      suddenly" (Symonds's _Renaissance_, iii. 359).... "Giulio
      Romano alone, by dint of robust energy and lurid fire of fancy
      flickering amid the smoke of his coarser nature, achieved a
      triumph. His Palazzo del Te at Mantua may be cited as the most
      perfect production of the epoch, combining, as it does, all
      forms of antique decoration and construction with the vivid
      individuality of genius" (_Symonds_, ii. 319; iii. 360). It was
      in 1523 that Giulio entered the service of Federigo Gonzaga,
      Duke of Mantua, and besides executing a very large number of
      works in oil and fresco, he was distinguished as an architect
      and rebuilt nearly the whole town.[156] Vasari made his
      acquaintance there, and admired his works so much that Giulio
      deserved, he said, to see a statue of himself erected at every
      corner of the city. During his earlier period at Rome, Giulio
      was entrusted with the completion of the frescoes of the Sala
      di Costantino in the Vatican. Among his best oil-pictures are
      the "Martyrdom of St. Stephen" in the church of that saint at
      Genoa, and a "Holy Family" in the Dresden Gallery.

An illustration of the classic myth of the infancy of Jupiter, who was
born in Crete and hidden by his mother, Rhea, in order to save him
from his father Saturn ("all-devouring Time"), who used to devour his
sons as soon as they were born, from fear of the prophecy that one of
them would dethrone him. In the background are the Curetes "who, as
the story is, erst drowned in Crete that infant cry of Jove, when the
young band about the babe in rapid dance, arms in hand to measured
tread, beat brass on brass, that Saturn might not get him to consign to
his devouring jaws" (_Lucretius_, Munro's translation, ii. 629). This
picture has been much admired by artists. Samuel Palmer, the friend of
William Blake, wrote of it: "By the bye, if you want to see a picture
bound by a splendid imagination upon the fine, firm, old philosophy, do
go and look at the Julio Romano (Nursing of Jupiter) in the National
Gallery. That is precisely the picture Blake would have revelled in. I
think I hear him say, 'As fine as possible, Sir! It is not permitted
to man to do better!'" (_Memoir of Anne Gilchrist_, p. 59). Elsewhere
Palmer proposed to a friend as a compact test of taste the question:
"Do I love the Julio Romano in the National Gallery?" (_Life and
Letters of Samuel Palmer_, p. 250). Another distinguished artist, John
Linnell, was also a great admirer of the picture. He strongly urged
its purchase for the National Gallery, declaring it to be "full of
beauty and without any alloy" (Story's _Life of Linnell_, ii. 123).


625. AN ALTAR-PIECE.

  _Il Moretto_ (Brescian: 1498-1555). _See 299._

The principal figure is St. Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444). He was
one of the most celebrated preachers of his time: hence the words on
the open book which he is represented as holding in his left hand,
"Father, I have manifested thy name to men." The Gospel which he
preached was "Salvation through Jesus Christ": hence the circle in
his right hand with the Latin monogram "I.H.S." (Jesus the Saviour of
mankind). He came of a noble family, but the secret of his power was
his determination to live amongst the poor ones of the earth: hence
at his feet are mitres inscribed with the names of the three cities
of which he refused the bishoprics. The attendant saints are Sts.
Jerome, Joseph, Francis (to whose order Bernardino belonged), and
Nicholas of Bari. Above is a vision of the only crown to which St.
Bernardino aspired--the company of the saints, the Virgin and Child,
St. Catherine, and St. Clara. Into the pervading expression of simple
and humble piety the artist has put, perhaps, something of his own
character; for he was a man of great personal piety, and he is said to
have always prepared himself (like Fra Angelico before him) by prayer
and fasting for any important work of sacred art. Something, too, of
this ascetic ideal may be seen in the attenuated figures of his saints.

"In those who already know Moretto, this altar-piece will," says Mr.
Pater, "awake many a reminiscence of his art at its best. The three
white mitres, for instance, grandly painted towards the centre of
the picture, at the feet of St. Bernardino, may remind one of the
great white mitre which, in the genial picture of St. Nicholas, in
the _Miracoli_ at Brescia, one of the children, who as delightfully
unconventional acolytes accompany their beloved patron into the
presence of the Madonna, carries along so willingly, laughing almost,
with pleasure and pride, at his part in so great a function. In the
altar-piece at the National Gallery those white mitres form the keynote
from which the pale, cloistral splendours of the whole picture radiate.
You see what a wealth of enjoyable colour Moretto, for one, can bring
out of monkish habits in themselves sad enough, and receive a new
lesson in the artistic value of reserve" ("Art Notes in North Italy,"
in _New Review_, November 1890).


626. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.

  _Botticelli_ (Florentine: 1447-1510). _See 1034._

This portrait was formerly ascribed in the Official Catalogue to
Masaccio. The wish was perhaps father to the thought, for Masaccio is
a very important person in the development of art (being the leader of
the scientific movement in Florentine painting, and also "the first
man," says Ruskin, "who entirely broke through the conventionality of
his time and painted pure landscape"), and is not otherwise represented
in the National Gallery. Mr. Wornum (the late Keeper) ascribed the
portrait to Filippino Lippi; it is now ascribed to Botticelli, who was
also distinguished in portrait-painting, which in his time was becoming
increasingly fashionable. "The waving lines in the falling hair, and
the drawing of the mouth, seem to leave no doubt that Botticelli
alone is the author of this impressive, yet simple and unpretentious,
likeness of an unknown Florentine" (Richter: _Italian Art in the
National Gallery_, p. 24).


627, 628. WATERFALLS.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682).

      Jacob van Ruysdael is usually accounted the greatest of the
      Dutch landscape painters. He often painted wild scenery, but
      it is perhaps in the quiet, and as it were uneventful pictures
      from the neighbourhood of Haarlem, that he charms us most. "At
      each moment in the country around Haarlem," says M. Michel,
      "the name of Ruysdael occurs to one with a recollection of
      some picture of his. One can follow his course and even find
      the very place where he must have sat." "Of all the Dutch
      painters," says Fromentin, "Ruysdael is the one who has the
      noblest resemblance to his country. He has its spaciousness,
      its sadness, its somewhat gloomy placidity, its monotonous
      and tranquil charm." But though in this way a product of the
      soil, Ruysdael's genius is essentially human and individual.
      His means of expression were the simplest. His touch is crisp
      and spirited, his workmanship thorough and conscientious; but
      he had no adventitious aids to attraction. There is, however,
      continues Fromentin, something in his works which compels
      respect. "It is the conviction created by them that they are
      the outcome of a great man who has something to say. The
      cause of his superiority to others is to be found in this,
      that there is behind the painter a man who thinks, behind each
      of his pictures an idea. In studying a picture by Ruysdael we
      become interested also in the personality of the painter. We
      find ourselves asking questions. Had he joys, as he certainly
      had bitterness? Did destiny give him occasion to love other
      things than clouds, and from what did he suffer most, if he
      did suffer, from the torment of painting well or of living?
      All these questions remain without answer, and yet posterity
      is interested in them. Would it occur to you to ask as much
      about Berchem, Karel Dujardin, Wouwerman, Goyen, Terburg,
      Metsu, Peter de Hoogh himself? All these brilliant or charming
      painters painted, and that seems to suffice. Ruysdael painted,
      but he also lived, and that is why it matters so much to know
      how he lived. I know only three or four men in the Dutch school
      whose personality is thus interesting--Rembrandt, Ruysdael,
      Paul Potter, and possibly Cuyp, which is already more than is
      enough to classify them" (_Les Maitres d'Autrefois_, Hollande,
      ch. vii. See also M. Emile Michel's article in the _Revue des
      deux Mondes_ for 1888). What we find pre-eminently in Ruysdael
      is a mind in harmony with nature in her simplest and most
      sombre moods. "The grey vapour that overspreads his skies
      seldom admits a fleeting gleam of sunshine to pass through"
      (Burton). Ruysdael is remarkable also for a certain solemn love
      of solitude, and this love of nature in itself, undisturbed by
      the incidents of daily life, distinguishes him from most of his
      contemporaries, and accounts, perhaps, for his popularity in
      more modern times. Goethe, who admired Ruysdael greatly, calls
      special attention to the painter's success in "representing the
      Past in the Present," and in suggesting to the spectator that
      "the works of nature live and last longer than the works of
      men"("Ruysdael als Dichter").

      The sense of isolation perceptible in his pictures is in
      keeping also with what we know of his life. He was born at
      Haarlem, the son of a picture-dealer and frame-maker, but
      became a citizen of Amsterdam. His father intended him for
      the medical profession, but he probably received instruction
      in painting from his uncle, Salomon van Ruysdael (1439). He
      remained unmarried in order, it is said, to promote the comfort
      of his aged father. He belonged to the sect of the Mennonites,
      who enjoined on their disciples strict separation from the
      world. In Ruysdael's case the world also separated itself
      from him. His talents were ignored by the great public of his
      day; and in 1681 he was admitted into the town's almshouse at
      Haarlem, where he died in the following year. His landscapes
      are now eagerly sought after and command high prices. His
      views are mostly taken from the northern provinces of the
      Netherlands; the Norwegian scenery which he introduced in
      many of his later works being studied probably from sketches
      by Van Everdingen. But it is probable, though (as a writer
      in the _Quarterly Review_ observes) no direct evidence in
      confirmation has yet been found, "that Ruysdael went to Norway
      either with or without Everdingen, and for a time steeped
      himself in the spirit of the wild landscape. The large number
      of works of the waterfall class that we possess show that he
      was deeply impressed by the artistic and ethical qualities of
      the landscape. Severe, remote, and melancholy, these Norwegian
      solitudes appealed to the mind of this most solitary of
      artists, in whose art, as Goethe said, the poetry of loneliness
      has found an eternal expression."

Waterfalls are a speciality with the painter (the name Ruysdael
appropriately signifies _foaming water_). "Ordinary running or falling
water may be sufficiently rendered, by observing careful curves of
projection with a dark ground, and breaking a little white over it, as
we see done with judgment and taste by Ruysdael" (_Modern Painters_,
vol. i. pt. ii. sec. v. ch. i. § 2). "Ruysdael's painting of falling
water," adds Ruskin (_ibid._ §21), "is generally agreeable; more than
agreeable it can hardly be considered. There appears no exertion of
mind in any of his works; nor are they calculated to produce either
harm or good by their feeble influence. They are good furniture
pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame." It is
interesting to compare this damningly faint praise from Ruskin with
the words of another critic. "Where is the traveller," asks M. Charles
Blanc, "familiar with the impressive beauties of mountainous countries,
who cannot find them in the pictures of Ruysdael? At the foot of those
steep rocks how the water falls, foams, and writhes round the ruins
it has brought down! It dashes forward from the right, from the left,
and from the background of the picture towards the gulf which draws
it in; it rushes down, I was going to say, with a hollow noise, for
in fact one imagines one can almost hear it. We see it gliding down
the slippery rocks, dashing against the rough bark of the trees, and
gushing down the rugged bottom of the ravine. We fancy we feel the
cold and humid spray falling on our faces.... But such is the power
of genius, that after having seen in all its magnificent reality the
spectacle which the artist has reproduced on a piece of canvas some few
inches in magnitude, nature seems to us less grand and less startling
than the work of Ruysdael."


629. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Lorenzo Costa_ (Ferrarese: 1460-1535).

      Lorenzo Costa was a pupil of Cosimo Tura, at Ferrara, but was
      soon drawn away to Bologna, where he worked with Francia. The
      friendship of these two men is a good instance of the unity
      between the different arts in the Middle Ages. Thus the
      workshop of Francia at Bologna consisted of two stories. In
      the upper story, pictures were painted under the supervision
      of Costa; whilst in the lower, gold and silver works were
      executed, and coins stamped, under the direction of Francia.
      Costa remained for twenty-three years at Bologna, where many
      of his principal works still exist. The altar-piece in the
      church of S. Giovanni in Monte is the most remarkable. In
      1509, invited by the Marquis Francesco Gonzaga, whose wife
      was Isabella d'Este, Costa fixed his abode in Mantua, where
      he remained till his death. He depicted their court in an
      allegorical composition, now in the Louvre. "Costa's style,"
      says Sir F. Burton, "varied during his long career. His earlier
      works bear signs of his filiation to Tura and Cossa. In later
      productions we may trace more of the amenity of Umbrian art,
      and finally the influence of his own pupil Francia. His best
      merits are a gentle gravity and a sense of colour. Want of
      force mars what is meant for grace."

This picture (which is signed, and dated 1505) should be compared
with the Perugino in the next room (288), for Lorenzo Costa has
been called "the Perugino of Ferrara," and works of his are in many
galleries wrongly attributed to Perugino. Every one will feel that
there is a grace and a sweetness here which recalls Perugino. Lorenzo,
too, has Perugino's fondness for a "purist" landscape (see 288); and
note the curious device, peculiar to the Ferrarese School, by which
he introduces it. The Madonna's throne is constructed in two parts,
so that between the base and the upper part a vacant space is left,
through which we look into the open air ("Thus saith the Lord, the
heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool"). One of Costa's
weaknesses may be observed in the figures of the standing saints.
"His figures are seldom planted firmly on the ground--a fault which
he shared with Francia. The ill-understood folds of their garments
obscure the form, and trail upon the ground in meaningless tags. This
insensibility on the part of Costa to one of the noblest means of
expression in art is remarkable, inasmuch as the works of Francesco
Cossa might have set him an example of draperies carefully studied,
true to fact, and often grandly disposed" (Burton).


630. MADONNA AND CHILD WITH SAINTS.

  _Gregorio Schiavone_ (Paduan: painted about 1470).

A picture of historical interest, as being the earliest in the
Gallery of the Paduan School. Gregorio, the Sclavonian (_i.e._
Dalmatian), though not, one must think, a very good artist, was proud
of his master, and this picture is signed (on the little card below
the throne) "the work of Schiavone, the pupil of Squarcione." That
master's style was distinguished by its _sculpturesque_ quality; and
in the works of a somewhat clumsy pupil like Gregorio ("this Dalmatian
clodhopper," Morelli calls him) one sees this tendency carried to
excess; the outline of the Madonna's face here, and still more in
904, is quite grotesquely sharp. Another characteristic of the school
is exemplified in both Gregorio's pictures--the choice, namely, of
antique embellishments, of bas-reliefs, and festoons of fruit, in the
accessories. Thus note here the bas-relief behind the Madonna's chair,
and in 904 the festoons of fruit upon the arch.


631. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Ascribed to Francesco Bissolo_ (Venetian: painted 1500-1528).

By one of Bellini's pupils and imitators. Observe the rich dress of a
Byzantine stuff embroidered with strange animals, such as one sees in
the old mosaics at Venice. The lady wears too a long gold chain, as the
Venetian women do to this day.


632, 633. TWO SAINTS.

  _Girolamo da Santa Croce_ (Venetian: painted 1520-1550).

      Girolamo--a relation probably of Francesco Rizo, also of Santa
      Croce (a village near Bergamo)--was one of the weaker followers
      of Giovanni Bellini. Morelli mentions, as a sign by which
      Girolamo's pictures, which are frequently met with in North
      Italian galleries, may often be recognised, that "he introduced
      a parrot whenever the subject he was treating would allow it,
      just as Paolo Farinato used to put a snail into his paintings
      as a sort of mark."

These two panels were formerly the doors of an altar-piece.


634. THE MADONNA OF THE GOLDFINCH.

  _Cima da Conegliano_ (Venetian: 1460-1518). _See 300._

The Madonna here wears a graver expression than is common with Cima.
There is the usual hilly background, with the ruins of a Roman temple
introduced on the left.


635. THE "REPOSE."

  _Titian_ (Venetian: 1477-1576). _See 4._

The subject of this radiantly beautiful picture is the familiar
"Repose" of the Holy Family during their flight into Egypt;
"perfect serenity and repose" are the keynote of the composition.
The introduction of St. John the Baptist, and St. Catherine[157]
embracing the Holy Child, and in the distance the angel appearing to
the shepherds, serve as the sign-manuals to mark the sacred subject.
For the rest it is a simple domestic scene, laid amongst the hills of
Titian's country, near Ceneda, on the way to Cadore:--

      To this Ceneda scenery I would assign those charming mixtures
      of woodland and plain,--those sweeping intermingling lines of
      hill, here broken by a jutting rock, sinking there into the
      sudden depth of bosky shades,--which are another characteristic
      of Titian's landscape. The play of light and shade over such
      a country, throwing out now this, now that, of the billowy
      ranges as they alternately smiled in sunshine, or frowned in
      shadow; now printing off a tower or a crag, dark against a
      far-off flitting gleam, now touching into brightness a cottage
      or a castle; he specially delighted to record.... It must
      have been from the village of Caverzano, and within an easy
      walk from Belluno, that he took the mountain forms, and noted
      the sublime effect upon them of evening light, introduced
      in the "Madonna and St. Catherine." The lines of hill and
      mountain are identical with a record in my sketch-book, and the
      sharp-pointed hill, almost lost in the rays, is one of the most
      familiar features in the neighbourhood of Belluno (Gilbert:
      _Cadore_, pp. 36, 59).

Mr. Gilbert makes another interesting remark, which may be verified in
this picture with its flocks of sheep, as well as in 270, with its farm
buildings:

      Another characteristic of Titian's landscape, and new in his
      time, is his perception of its domestic charm--the sweetness
      of a home landscape. A cottage, a farm, a mill, take the
      place with him of the temples, towers, and lordly palaces of
      town-bred painters.... Honest travellers on a country track,
      or sleeping in the shade; the peasant going forth to labour,
      or returning with his tools; the high-roofed, quaintly gabled
      farm, with its nondescript surroundings, and all set snugly on
      the bosky knoll ... these are his favourite subjects. But they
      never would have been so to a thorough Venetian. They show us
      the man of the hills--the breezy, happy hills: the man of many
      pleasant memories, upon the sward, beside the brook, under the
      bending boughs: the man who carried no city apprehensions, or
      city squeamishness to country places, but was at home anywhere
      under the broad heaven (_ibid._ p. 60).

The colour-scheme of this masterpiece is worth noting. It is in keeping
with the effect of coolness and repose aimed at in the composition.
"The dominant chord is composed by the cerulean blues of the heaven and
of the Virgin's dress, the deep luscious greens of the landscape and
the peculiar pale citron hue, relieved with a crimson girdle, of the
robe worn by St. Catherine. With this exception there is not a trace
of red in the picture. Contrary to almost universal usage, it might
almost be said to orthodoxy, the entire draperies of the Virgin are of
one intense blue. Her veil-like headgear is of a brownish-gray, while
the St. Catherine wears a golden-brown scarf, continuing the glories of
her elaborately dressed hair. The audacity of the colour-scheme is only
equalled by its success; no calculated effort at anything unusual being
apparent" (Claude Phillips: _The Later Work of Titian_, p. 10).

This picture, which is signed TICIAN, was formerly in the Sacristy of
the Escurial; it has the Escurial mark on the back. A "Madonna with
St. Catherine" by Titian is mentioned in a letter of 1530 written by
Giacomo Malatesta to Federigo Gonzaga at Mantua. The reference is
supposed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle to be to the "Vierge au Lupin" of
the Louvre; but it may be to our picture (see Phillips: _The Earlier
Work of Titian_, p. 82 _n._).


636. "PORTRAIT OF A POET."

  _Titian_; or _Palma Vecchio_ (Bergamese: 1480-1528).
  _See also_ (p. xix)

This picture was long ascribed to Titian; then for many years to Palma
(of whom, therefore, some notice is here retained); now it has been
restored by the officials to Titian. Others believe it to be the work
of Giorgione (see below).

      Jacopo Palma, the elder (II Vecchio), is one of the most
      illustrious of the "post-Bellinian School" of painters at
      Venice. But he was born near Bergamo and "could never
      entirely lay aside his mountain nature in his works" (see
      Morelli's _German Galleries_, pp. 13-18, 24-31, for the best
      account of Palma's place in art history). He was especially
      great in the Holy Families, called by the Italians "Sante
      Conversazioni," in which the figures of sacred story are
      grouped together in restful attitudes and enframed with blue
      mountain landscapes. He painted so many of these compositions
      that Ruskin says--somewhat too sweepingly--that he painted "no
      profane subject of importance" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v.
      pt. ix. ch. iii. § 17). He was also a magnificent painter of
      female and fancy portraits--a branch of art in which he rivals
      even Titian. Palma's works are sometimes divided into three
      manners--the Bellinesque, the Giorgionesque, and the _blonde_.
      Among the most famous of his productions are the "Adoration
      of the Shepherds," in the Louvre; the "Jacob and Rachel," at
      Dresden; and the altar-piece in St. Sebastiano at Vicenza--"his
      finest and most perfect work," according to Morelli. His "St.
      Barbara," in S. Maria Formosa at Venice, is also celebrated.
      The so-called "Bella da Tiziano," at Rome, and the "Three
      Sisters," at Dresden, are among the best-known of his portraits.

This fine portrait was formerly supposed to represent Ariosto
(1474-1533), who was acquainted with Titian and commemorates him as one
"who honours Cadore not less than Sebastiano del Piombo and Raphael
honour Venice and Urbino." But the portrait bears little resemblance to
the poet as he is known to us by authenticated likenesses. The title
"Portrait of a Poet" is based partly on the character of the face,
partly on the bush of laurel in the background. The evidence for the
ascription to Palma is by no means conclusive (see _Notes and Queries_,
Dec. 28, 1889). Mr. W. Fred Dickes has suggested--ingeniously, if not
convincingly--that the portrait is of the famous "Liberator of Italy,"
Prospero Colonna (1464-1523), painted in 1500, when he was living in
temporary retirement as a lay brother in a Benedictine monastery.
Prospero is described as "tall in person, ruddy in countenance; his
eyes were black, his beard reddish, and the locks of his hair of a
chestnut character." The laurel would be appropriate to a victorious
captain, no less than to a poet. Mr. Dickes ascribes the portrait
to Giorgione (see _Magazine of Art_, March and April 1893). This
ascription is accepted by Mr. Herbert Cook. "The conception is
characteristic of Giorgione--the pensive charm, the feeling of reserve,
the touch of fanciful imagination in the decorative accessories, but,
above all, the extreme refinement.... Where can the like be found
in Palma, or even Titian? Titian is more virile in his conception,
less lyrical, less fanciful; Palma, infinitely less subtle in
characterisation" (_Giorgione_, p. 84).


637. DAPHNIS AND CHLOE.

  _Paris Bordone_ (Venetian: 1500-1570).

      Paris Bordone, one of the most splendid colourists of the
      Venetian School, was born of a noble family of Treviso. "He was
      taken," says Vasari, "at the age of eight to certain of his
      mother's kindred in Venice, where, having studied grammar and
      become an excellent musician, he was sent to Titian." With him
      he remained for a few years, and afterwards "set himself to
      imitate the manner of Giorgione to the utmost of his power."
      "Though Venetian in his education, he took a path peculiar
      to himself, and it is only a very inexperienced eye that can
      mistake him for Giorgione or Titian. He is remarkable for a
      delicate rosy colour in his flesh, and for the purple, crimson,
      and shot tints of his draperies, which are usually in small
      and crumpled folds" (Kugler). His most famous work--the large
      picture in the Venetian Academy of "The Fisherman presenting
      the Ring of St. Mark to the Doge"--is a masterpiece of gorgeous
      colouring. "The moment you come before the picture you say,
      '_What_ a piece of colour!' To Paris the Duke, the Senate, and
      the miracle are all merely vehicles for flashes of scarlet
      and gold on marble and silk" (Ruskin's _Guide to the Venetian
      Academy_, p. 17). He painted sacred subjects, mythology,
      and portraits. In all alike he found occasion for the same
      brilliant display of flesh-tints and stuffs. Visitors to the
      Italian lakes will find a Holy Family by Bordone at Lovere, in
      the Accademia Tadini, which is another of his masterpieces.
      There are some fine portraits by him at Hampton Court, and No.
      674 in our Gallery is a very characteristic example. Chloe in
      the picture before us belongs to the same type. "The ideal
      of beauty for women in Italy during the sixteenth century
      was--perhaps because so difficult of attainment!--extreme
      blondness. Palma seems to have had no other aim than to fill
      his canvases with expanses of fair flesh and yellow hair. Paris
      Bordone succeeded Palma as the fashionable beauty-painter, and
      continued the tradition" (Mary Logan: _Guide to the Italian
      Pictures at Hampton Court_, p. 28). The fame of Bordone led
      to his being invited to France by Francis II. in 1558-1559 to
      paint the ladies of the Court. He was knighted by the king. He
      also visited Augsburg to execute commissions for the merchant
      princes of that city. "He lives quietly in his own house," says
      Vasari, "working only at the request of princes, or others of
      his friends, avoiding all rivalry and those vain ambitions
      which do but disturb the repose of man."

Daphnis and Chloe, a shepherd and shepherdess, whose life and love were
a favourite Greek story, are about to be crowned by Cupid with a wreath
of myrtle.


638. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH SAINTS.

  _Francia_ (Ferrarese-Bolognese: 1450-1517).

For more important pictures by this master, see 179 and 180. The saint
with the palm-branch here will be recognised in one of the angels in
180.


639. "NOLI ME TANGERE!"

  _Francesco Mantegna_ (Paduan: about 1470-1517).

      Francesco was the pupil and assistant of his father Andrea,
      whose style is very obvious in this and the two companion
      pictures (1106, 1381). Francesco completed some work which
      Andrea had left unfinished.

(For the subject see 270.) The three little pictures by Francesco (639,
1106, 1381) are all noticeable for their dainty detail, often selected
for symbolic meaning. Thus, notice here the vine with purple grapes
supported on a dead tree which hangs over the figure of Christ--an
emblem of life and death. The vine is the most ancient of all symbols
of Christ and his Church, being founded on His own words: "I am the
vine, ye are the branches." On the other side a bird is seen defending
its nest against a snake which has crept up the tree; on the left is a
beehive.


640. ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

  _Dosso Dossi_ (Ferrarese: 1479-1542).

      Giovanni di Lutero, who adopted the name of Dosso Dossi,
      was the greatest colourist of the Ferrarese School. "His
      masterpiece is the great altar picture formerly in the Church
      of S. Andrea at Ferrara, but now in the public gallery of that
      city, and one of the principal art treasures of Italy. This
      sumptuous work, notwithstanding the irreparable injuries it
      had sustained from injudicious restorations and repaints, is
      still a perfect blaze of colour" (Kugler). The little picture
      before us gives an inadequate impression of the painter's
      powers. No. 1234 is more characteristic. For Dossi's real bent
      lay towards portraiture and romantic subjects. Portraits by
      him of the Dukes of Ferrara and of other personages are in the
      public gallery at Modena. Of his subject-pictures the "Circe"
      of the Borghese Gallery at Rome is the most sumptuous. The
      records of Dossi's career are scanty; but his works "point
      strongly to two widely different currents of influence, the
      one Venetian, the other Ferrarese." He is supposed to have
      been for some years at Venice, but to have studied first under
      the Ferrarese Lorenzo Costa at Bologna. "His education in art,
      the main characteristics of his style, and his long residence
      at Ferrara, where he was attached to the court, and where
      he chiefly worked, entitle him to a place in the Ferrarese
      School.... His colouring is much admired, and justly, for its
      force, brilliancy, and novel harmonies: but it would be a
      mistake to class it with that of the great Venetian masters
      who had a profounder knowledge and a purer ideal of colour"
      (Burton). Dossi's romantic genius was no doubt fostered by
      his friendship with Ariosto, who celebrated Dosso and his
      brother Battista in somewhat exaggerated terms, naming them
      in the same breath with Leonardo, Mantegna, Bellini, Michael
      Angelo, Raphael, and Titian. "The name of Dosso," says Vasari
      ill-naturedly, "had then obtained greater fame from the pen of
      Messer Ludovico than from all the pencils and colours consumed
      by himself in the whole course of his life." Dosso was highly
      favoured, he adds, by Duke Alphonso, of Ferrara, "first because
      of his abilities in art, and next on account of his excellent
      qualities as a man and the pleasantness of his manners, which
      were advantages always highly acceptable to the Duke" (iii.
      256). There are many pictures by Dosso in private collections
      in England. The exhibition of the Ferrarese School at the
      Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1894 included thirteen of them.
      He is well represented at Hampton Court. "His works," says
      Mary Logan in an interesting appreciation of the painter, "are
      distinguished from all Venetian paintings by effects of light
      in dreamland rather than in the everyday world (and have in
      them) ... a fascinating touch of the bizarre" (Kyrle Society's
      _Guide to the Italian Pictures at Hampton Court_). Many
      pictures passing under other names have been restored to Dosso
      by Morelli (see his _Borghese and Doria-Pamfili Galleries_, pp.
      214-219).


641. THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY.

  _Ludovico Mazzolino_ (Ferrarese: 1480-1528). _See 169._

A picture chiefly remarkable, like 169, for its accessories. Notice the
ornamental sculpture, the paintings in imitation of bronze relievo, and
the modelled plaster work on the walls.


642. CHRIST'S AGONY IN THE GARDEN.

  _Garofalo_ (Ferrarese: 1481-1559). _See 81._

It is interesting to compare this with other versions of the subject
in the Gallery--_e.g._ 76, 726, 1417. What we may call the necessary
component parts of the picture are all present--the angel with cup
and cross, the sleeping apostles, a crowd with torches approaching.
But Garofalo's picture seems cold and unimaginative as compared with
Correggio's, Bellini's, or Mantegna's.


643. THE CAPTURE OF CARTHAGENA.

  _Ascribed to Rinaldo Mantovano_ (Roman: early 16th century).

      This and the companion picture, 644, formerly ascribed to
      Giulio Romano, are now ascribed to Rinaldo of Mantua, one of
      the scholars whom Giulio formed when at work in that city.
      Rinaldo is mentioned by Vasari as the ablest painter that
      Mantua ever produced, and as having been "prematurely removed
      from the world by death."

In the upper compartment is represented the capture of New Carthage by
the Roman general, Publius Cornelius Scipio, B.C. 210. He distinguished
himself on that occasion by the generosity with which he treated the
Spanish hostages kept there by the Carthaginians. This is the subject
of the lower compartment. Among the hostages was a girl--hardly
represented here as in the story, "so beautiful that all eyes turned
upon her"--whom Scipio protected from indignity and formally betrothed
to her own lover, who is here advancing to touch the great man's hand,
and when they brought thank-offerings to Scipio, he ordered them, as we
see here, to be removed again: "accept them from me," he said, "as the
girl's dowry" (_Livy_, xxvi. ch. 50).


644. THE RAPE OF THE SABINES.

  _Ascribed to Rinaldo Mantovano_ (Roman: early 16th century).

Romulus, the founder of Rome--so the story goes--had collected a
motley crew of men about him, and demanded women from the neighbouring
states wherewith to people his kingdom. And when they refused, he
determined to take them by stratagem. He appointed a day for a splendid
sacrifice, with public games and shows, and the neighbouring Sabines
flocked with their wives and daughters to see the sight. He himself
presided, sitting among his nobles, clothed in purple. As a signal for
the assault, he was to rise, gather up his robe, and fold it about
him. Many of the people wore swords that day, and kept their eyes upon
him, watching for the signal, which was no sooner given than they
drew them, and, rushing on with a shout, seized the daughters of the
Sabines, but quietly suffered the men to escape. This is the subject
of the upper compartment of this picture. But afterwards the Sabines
fought the Romans in order to recover their daughters. The battle was
long and fierce, until the Sabine women threw themselves between the
combatants and induced them to ratify the accomplished union with
terms of friendship and alliance. This is the subject of the lower
compartment--the intervention of the Sabine women in the right-hand
part, the reconciliation in the left.


645. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Albertinelli_ (Florentine: 1474-1515).

      Mariotto Albertinelli, a pupil of Cosimo Rosselli, was the
      friend and assistant of the painter-monk, Fra Bartolommeo (see
      1694). He himself, being of an impatient character, "was so
      offended with certain criticisms of his work," says Vasari,
      "that he gave up painting and turned publican."

This picture is often now attributed to a later painter--Sogliani,
1492-1544.


646. ST. CATHARINE.

  _Unknown_ (Umbrian School: 15th century).

This, and the companion picture (647), formerly deposited in the South
Kensington Museum, were at the time of their purchase (in 1860) from
the Beauconsin Collection "ascribed to Ridolfo Ghirlandajo."


647. ST. URSULA.

  _Unknown_ (Umbrian School: 15th century).

The emblem of her martyrdom, an arrow, is in her right hand.


648. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Lorenzo di Credi_ (Florentine: 1459-1537). _See 593._

A pretty landscape background, with a ruin, and the angel appearing
to the shepherds in the distance--the whole charmingly harmonious in
its blue-grays. "A pure and simple-minded man, Lorenzo delighted in
pure, bright, and simple landscapes, in which one reads something of
the gentle Angelico's feeling. Nature with Credi, as with the saint
of Fiesole, must show no stain, no trouble, no severity, no sign of
the transient. Far be it from him to introduce the jagged ranges that
Leonardo reared upon his far, mysterious horizons. No, he must have all
that is green and blue, and cheerful" (Gilbert's _Landscape in Art_, p.
225). With regard to the landscape backgrounds of the Italian painters,
Mr. Mackail, in a letter to F. T. Palgrave (_Journals and Memories_,
p. 256), raises the question "whether landscape painting has not lost
as well as gained by being elevated from the background into the
substance of a picture; whether, that is, the moral or human interest
that is essential to all great art can exist in pure landscape painting
without putting a greater strain on it than it will bear. Take, for
instance, the landscape backgrounds of Lorenzo di Credi's pictures in
the National Gallery, or of the great Perugino triptych. Have they
not a moral or spiritual quality, as they stand in their place in the
picture, that they can only have through this elusive (if one may say
so) treatment?"


649. PORTRAIT OF A BOY.

  _Angelo Bronzino_ (Florentine: 1502-1572).

      Angelo di Cosimo, called Il Bronzino, was born in a suburb
      of Florence, of poor parents; he became a popular artist,
      "nor have we any one in our day," says Vasari, "who is more
      ingenious, varied, fanciful, and spirited in the jesting kind
      of verse." He was also good at a more serious kind of verse;
      amongst other things he wrote sonnets on Benvenuto Cellini's
      "Perseus," of which Cellini says, "they spoke so generously
      of my performance, in that fine style of his which is most
      exquisite, that this alone repaid me somewhat for the pain
      of my long troubles." Vasari was a great friend of his, and
      speaks in the warmest terms of his generosity and kindness. He
      was the favourite pupil of Pontormo, some of whose works, left
      unfinished, he completed. His portraits, if sometimes hard and
      cold, are often excellent, and form a gallery of great interest
      to the historian of Florence. In his frescoes and allegories,
      he belongs to the period of decline. His "Descent of Christ
      into Hell," in the Uffizi, is among the most celebrated of
      his works. "Want of thought and feeling, combined with the
      presumptuous treatment of colossal and imaginative subjects,
      renders his compositions inexpressibly chilling" (_Symonds_,
      iii. 365). Ruskin cites him as an instance of the "base
      grotesque of men who, having no true imagination, are apt,
      more than others, to try by startling realism to enforce the
      monstrosity that has no terror in itself" (_Modern Painters_,
      vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. viii. § 8).

This charming portrait was formerly attributed to Pontormo. Sir Edward
Poynter, following Frizzoni, has transferred it to Bronzino. (See _Arte
Italiana del Rinascimento_, p. 267.)


650. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Angelo Bronzino_ (Florentine: 1502-1572). _See 649._
  _See also_ (p. xix)

"In the rich costume of the sixteenth century," says the Official
Catalogue,--and the picture therein resembles most portraits of the
time. For it is a remarkable thing how much great art depends on
gay and dainty gowns. Note first, in going round these rooms, how
fondly all the best painters enjoy dress patterns. "It doesn't matter
what school they belong to--Fra Angelico, Perugino, John Bellini,
Giorgione, Titian, Tintoret, Veronese, Leonardo da Vinci--no matter
how they differ in other respects, all of them like dress patterns;
and what is more, the nobler the painter is, the surer he is to do
his patterns well." Then note, as following from this fact, how much
of the splendour of the pictures that we most admire depends on
splendour of dress. "True nobleness of dress is a necessity to any
nation which wishes to possess living art, concerned with portraiture
of human nature. No good historical painting ever yet existed, or
ever can exist, where the dresses of the people of the time are not
beautiful; and had it not been for the lovely and fantastic dressing
of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, neither French nor
Florentine nor Venetian art could have risen to anything like the rank
it reached" (see, _e.g._, under 294). And with regard to this nobleness
of dress, it may be observed lastly how "the best dressing was never
the costliest; and its effect depended much more on its beautiful and,
in early times, modest arrangement, and on the simple and lovely manner
of its colour, than on gorgeousness of clasp or embroidery" (_Cambridge
Inaugural Address_, p. 11; _A joy for ever_, § 54).


651. AN ALLEGORY: "ALL IS VANITY."

  _Angelo Bronzino_ (Florentine: 1502-1572). _See 649._

Venus, crowned as Queen of Life, yet with the apple of discord in
her hand, turns her head to kiss Cupid, whose wings are coloured in
Delight, but behind whom is the gaunt figure of Jealousy, tearing her
hair. Folly, with one foot in manacles, and the other treading on a
thorn, is preparing to throw a handful of roses--

    Sweet is Love and sweet is the Rose,
      Each has a flower and each has a thorn.

A Harpy, the personification of vain desire and fitful passion, with a
human face, but with claws to her feet and with a serpent's body, is
offering in one hand a piece of honey-comb, whilst she holds her sting
behind her in the other. In one corner, beneath the God of Love, doves
are billing and cooing; but over against them, beneath Folly, there are
masks showing the hideous emptiness of human passion. And behind them
all is Time, with wings to speed his course and the hour-glass on his
shoulders to mark his seasons, preparing to let down the veil which
Pleasure, with grapes twined in her hair, and with the scowl of angry
disappointment on her face, seeks in vain to lift--

    "Redeem mine hours--the space is brief--
      While in my glass the sand-grains shiver,
    And measureless thy joy or grief,
      When Time and thou shalt part for ever!"

SCOTT: _The Antiquary_.

This picture--in some ways harsh and vulgar--was originally painted for
Francis I. of France. For a note on its crude colouring, see 270.


652. CHARITY.

  _Francesco Salviati_ (Florentine: 1510-1563).

      Francesco Rossi, called "de' Salviati" from his patron, the
      Cardinal of that name, studied under Andrea del Sarto, and was
      an imitator of Michael Angelo. He was a great friend of Vasari,
      whose life of Salviati gives a most interesting account of
      their intimacy, especially of their early student days, when
      they "met together and went on festival days or at other times
      to copy a design from the best works wherever these were to be
      found dispersed about the city of Florence." In 1548 Salviati
      settled in Rome, where he was much employed.

The usual pictorial representation of Charity, as a woman surrounded
by children and giving suck, is the same as Spenser's description of
"Charissa"--

      She was a woman in her freshest age,
    Of wondrous beauty, and of bounty rare....
    Her necke and brests were ever open bare,
    That aye thereof her babes might sucke their fill....
      A multitude of babes about her hong,
    Playing their sportes, that joy'd her to behold;
    Whom still she fed whiles they were weake and young,
    But thrust them forth still as they wexed old.

  _The Faërie Queene_, i. 10. xxx. xxxi.


653. HUSBAND AND WIFE.

  _Unknown_ (Early Flemish: 15th century).

This picture, formerly ascribed to Roger van der Weyden, and called
"The Painter and his Wife," is delightfully typical of the Flemish
ideal both in man and woman--"the man shrewd and determined, the woman
sweet and motherly." "They are not fine of figure nor graceful of
limb, but, with hardly an exception, their faces tell us that they
are men of tried capacity and learnt experience. Through the eyes of
many of them glances a happy, childlike soul enough, but the mind is
almost invariably a slow-moving, solid power ... and such as they, were
the artists who painted them; they possessed the same industry, they
admired the same qualities. The virtue of honest strength, which made
the men of Flanders the merchant princes of Europe, was the virtue
whose traces the artists of Flanders loved to observe.... They care
little for mystery, little for pity, little for enthusiasm.... They
love a man whose visage tells the strength of his character, who has
weathered the buffetings of many a storm, and bears on his visage the
marks of the struggle" (Conway's _Early Flemish Artists_, p. 104).


654. THE MAGDALEN.

  _Later School of Roger van der Weyden_ (Early Flemish:
  1400-about 1464). _See_ 664.
  _See also_ (p. xix)

Known for the Magdalen by the small vase at her feet--emblem, in all
the religious painters, of the alabaster box of ointment--"the symbol
at once of her conversion and her love." In these "reading Magdalens"
she is represented as now reconciled to heaven, and magnificently
attired--in reference to her former state of worldly prosperity.
"It is difficult for us, in these days, to conceive the passionate
admiration and devotion with which the Magdalen was regarded by her
votaries in the Middle Ages. The imputed sinfulness of her life only
brought her nearer to them. Those who did not dare to lift up their
eyes to the more saintly models of purity and holiness,--the martyrs
who had suffered in the cause of chastity,--took courage to invoke
her intercession" (Mrs. Jameson: _Sacred and Legendary Art_, p. 205).
Hence the numerous Magdalens to be met with in nearly every picture
gallery; in art decidedly there has been "more joy over one sinner that
repenteth than over ninety-and-nine that need no repentance."

"This picture is undoubtedly by the unknown master who painted two
remarkable panels formerly in the Abbey of Flémalle in Belgium, but now
in the Städel Museum at Frankfort-on-Maine. They present respectively
the standing figure of the Virgin with the Infant at her breast, and
the figure of St. Veronica, as an elderly woman, holding before her
the sacred napkin on which is the impression of our Lord's visage.
These, and a third panel in the same museum, representing the Trinity,
but, unlike the others, painted in monochrome, must have belonged to a
large altar-piece in many compartments, of which it is quite possible
the small picture above described may have formed one" (_Official
Catalogue_). Mr. Claude Phillips, on the other hand, while admiring
the delicate and exquisite colour of our picture and the enamel-like
quality of its surface, sees in it no resemblance to the works
described above (see _Academy_, Sept. 28, 1889).


655. THE READING MAGDALEN.

  _Bernard van Orley_ (Flemish: about 1490-1542).
  _See also_ (p. xix)

      This painter, who studied in Raphael's school, was a designer
      for tapestry (the staple industry of Brussels in his time) and
      stained glass, as well as what is now exclusively called an
      artist, and had all a designer's care for little things. He
      superintended the manufacture of the tapestries of the Vatican
      made from Raphael's cartoons, and there are some tapestries by
      him in the great hall at Hampton Court.

Notice the prettily designed cup in ivory and gold--symbolical of the
box of precious ointment offered by the Magdalen to her Lord. For the
subject see under last picture.


656: A MAN'S PORTRAIT.

_Mabuse_ (Flemish: about 1470-1541).

      Jan Gossart, called Mabuse from the town in Hainault (now in
      France) where he was born, is interesting in the history of
      art as the man who began the emigration of Flemish painters to
      Italy. He set out in 1508 in the suite of Philip of Burgundy,
      and remained about ten years in Italy where he copied the works
      of Leonardo and Michael Angelo. He was one of the illuminators
      of the famous Grimani Breviary in the Library at Venice. The
      finest example of the first, or Flemish period of Mabuse is
      the "Adoration of the Magi" at Castle Howard. To his second
      period, in which Italian influence is discernible, belongs
      the altar-piece in the Cathedral of Prague. There is a good
      portrait group by him at Hampton Court representing the
      children of King Christian II. of Denmark. A very fine work,
      attributed to Mabuse, has recently been added to the Gallery,
      No. 1689.

The sitter here is of the Flemish national type, but the Italian
influence may be seen in the Renaissance architecture of the background.


657. A DUTCH GENTLEMAN AND LADY.

  _Jacob Cornelissen_ (Dutch: about 1475-1555).

      This painter was the master of Jan Schorel (720), and is
      mentioned by Van Mander as a great artist. Most of his
      altar-pieces for the churches of Holland perished during the
      Reformation. He was also an engraver, and his woodcuts were as
      much admired as the copperplates of his contemporary, Lucas
      van Leyden. He had a son, Dirk, who was also a good painter,
      especially of portraits.

Presumably a husband and wife--the donors, we may suppose, of an
altar-piece. Their patron saints attend them. St. Peter lays his hand
approvingly on the man's shoulder. The woman, as "the weaker vessel,"
seems to be supported by St. Paul. It should be noticed that in sacred
and legendary art these two saints are almost always introduced
together--St. Peter, with the keys, representing the church of the
converted Jews, St. Paul that of the Gentiles: his common attributes
are a book (denoting his Epistles), and a sword, signifying the manner
of his martyrdom, and being emblematic also of "the good fight" fought
by the faithful Christian with "the sword of the Spirit, which is the
word of God."


658. THE DEATH OF THE VIRGIN.

  _After Schongauer_. (German-Swabian: 1450-about 1488).
  _See also_ (p. xix)

      A picture, painted perhaps by Hugo van der Goes, on the
      lines of a print by Martin Schongauer, who was known to his
      contemporaries as "the glory of painters" and "Martin the
      Beautiful." He was born at Colmar, but probably studied under
      Roger van der Weyden. By some the picture is ascribed to the
      anonymous "Master of Flémalle," a contemporary of Roger van der
      Weyden: for whom see a little picture in Room XVI., now (1908)
      lent to the Gallery by Mr. Salting.

The "absolute joy in ugliness," which Ruskin finds most strongly
exemplified in some of Schongauer's prints (_Modern Painters_, vol.
iv. pt. v. ch. xix. § 18), is not altogether absent from this picture.
A more unpleasant bedchamber, with its unseemly crowd of fat bustling
apostles (notice the old fellow puffing away at a censer on the left),
it would be hard to conceive. One is glad to escape through the open
window to the pretty little view of the square.


659. PAN AND SYRINX.

  _Johann Rottenhammer_ (German: 1564-1623).
  _See also_ (p. xix)

      This painter was born at Munich. Early in life he went to Rome,
      where he obtained some reputation. He next went to Venice,
      where he executed some pictures in imitation of Tintoretto,
      who was then still living. On his return to his native country
      he settled at Augsburg, and was much patronised by the Emperor
      Rudolph II.

The nymph Syrinx, beloved by Pan and flying from his pursuit, takes
refuge among some bulrushes. The god, thinking to grasp her, finds only
reeds in his hand--

    And while he sighs his ill-success to find,
    The tender canes were shaken by the wind,
    And breathed a mournful air, unheard before,
    That, much surprising Pan, yet pleased him more.

  DRYDEN, from Ovid's _Metamorphoses_.

He formed the reeds into a pipe, hence the name of Syrinx given to the
"Pan's pipe," see 94. The background of this picture (which is executed
on copper) is said to be by Jan Brueghel (for whom see 1287).


660. A MAN'S PORTRAIT.

  _Ascribed to François Clouet_ (French: about 1510-1572).

      François Clouet, like his father Jeannet before him, was
      court painter to the King of France. Jeannet was, however,
      probably a Netherlander; and François remained faithful to the
      old northern style of painting. This and the other portrait
      ascribed to him might well be taken for works of the Flemish
      school.

In the costume of the 16th century: dated 1543.


661. THE MADONNA DI SAN SISTO.

  _After Raphael_. (See _under_ 1171.)

A tracing from the original picture by Raphael at Dresden, by Jakob
Schlesinger (1793-1855)--a Professor of Painting at Berlin.


663. THE RESURRECTION.

  _Fra Angelico_ (Florentine: 1387-1455).

      Artists may be divided according to the subjects of their
      choice into Purists, Naturalists, and Sensualists. The first
      take the good in the world or in human nature around them
      and leave the evil; the second render all that they see,
      sympathising with all the good, and yet confessing the evil
      also; the third perceive and imitate evil only (_Stones of
      Venice_, vol. ii. ch. vi. § 51). Of the first class Fra
      Giovanni da Fiesole is the leading type. His life was largely
      spent in the endeavour to imagine the beings of another
      world.[158] His baptismal name was Guido, but he changed it
      early in life to Giovanni, when he entered a Dominican convent
      in Florence. He was once offered the archbishopric of his city,
      but he refused it: "He who practises the art of painting,"
      he said, "has need of quiet, and should live without cares
      and anxieties; he who would do the work of Christ must dwell
      continually with Him." He was given the name of "Angelico,"
      and after his death the style and distinction of "Beato" (the
      Blessed), for his purity and heavenly-mindedness, and it
      is said of him that "he was never known to be angry, or to
      reprove, save in gentleness and love. Nor did he ever take
      pencil in hand without prayer, and he could not paint the
      Passion of Christ without tears of sorrow." By this "purity of
      life, habitual elevation of thought, and natural sweetness of
      disposition, he was enabled to express the sacred affections
      upon the human countenance as no one ever did before or since.
      In order to effect clearer distinction between heavenly beings
      and those of this world, he represents the former as clothed
      in draperies of the purest colour, crowned with glories of
      burnished gold, and entirely shadowless. With exquisite choice
      of gesture, and disposition of folds of drapery, this mode of
      treatment gives, perhaps, the best idea of spiritual beings
      which the human mind is capable of forming. It is, therefore,
      a true ideal; but the mode in which it is arrived at (being
      so far mechanical and contradictory of the appearances of
      nature) necessarily precludes those who practise it from
      being complete masters of their art. It is always childish,
      but beautiful in its childishness" (_Modern Painters_, vol.
      iii. pt. iv. ch. vi. § 4). Angelico, it may be added, looking
      on his work as an inspiration from God, never altered or
      improved his designs when once completed, saying that "such
      was the will of God." Angelico's work, says Ruskin in a later
      passage, in which he discusses the weakness of the monastic
      ideal, will always retain its power, "as the gentle words of
      a child will." Yet "the peculiar phenomenon in his art is,
      to me, not its loveliness, but its weakness.... Of all men
      deserving to be called great, Fra Angelico permits to himself
      the least pardonable faults and the most palpable follies.
      There is evidently within him a sense of grace and power of
      invention as great as Ghiberti's; ... [but] comparing him with
      contemporary great artists of equal grace and invention, one
      peculiar character remains noticeable in him--which, logically,
      we ought therefore to attribute to the religious fervour;--and
      that distinctive character is, the contented indulgence of
      his own weaknesses, and perseverance in his own ignorances."
      Passing to consider the sources of the peculiar charm which
      we nevertheless feel in Angelico's work, Ruskin mentions
      "for one minor thing, an exquisite variety and brightness of
      ornamental work"; while "much of the impression of sanctity"
      is "dependent on a singular repose and grace of gesture,
      consummating itself in the floating, flying, and, above all,
      in the dancing groups" (_Ethics of the Dust_, pp. 150-152).
      Fra Angelico is said to have begun his artistic career as an
      illuminator of manuscripts--a tradition which is entirely in
      accordance with the style of his later works. In 1409 he left
      Fiesole for Foligno and Cortona. In the churches of the latter
      place fine altar-pieces by him are still preserved. From 1418
      to 1436 he was again at Fiesole. In the latter year he was
      invited to Florence to decorate the new Convent of St. Mark.
      His frescoes here occupied him nine years. "This convent, now
      converted into a national monument, is a very museum of Fra
      Angelico--cloisters, refectory, chapter-house, guest-room,
      corridor, stairs, and not less than nineteen or twenty cells,
      bear witness to a skill and leisure alike obsolete." Copies of
      several of the frescoes may be seen in the Arundel Society's
      collection. In 1445 Fra Angelico was called to Rome, where he
      painted the chapel of Nicolas V. in the Vatican (also copied
      and engraved for the Arundel Society). At Orvieto in 1447 he
      commenced some paintings in the chapel of the Madonna di San
      Brixio, which were afterwards completed by Signorelli. The last
      years of the painter's life were spent at Rome. He was buried
      in the Church of the Minerva, where his recumbent effigy (an
      emaciated figure in the Dominican habit) may still be seen.
      "Some works are for Earth," says a line in his Latin epitaph,
      "others for Heaven."

The weakness and the strength of the painter are alike well seen in
this picture of Christ, with the banner of the resurrection surrounded
by the Blessed. The representation of Christ Himself is weak and devoid
of dignity; but what can be more beautiful than the surrounding angel
choirs, "with the flames on their white foreheads waving brighter as
they move, and the sparkles streaming from their purple wings like
the glitter of many suns upon a sounding sea, listening in the pauses
of alternate song for the prolonging of the trumpet blast, and the
answering of psaltery and cymbal, throughout the endless deep, and
from all the star shores of heaven" (_Modern Painters_, vol. ii. pt.
iii. sec. ii. ch. v. § 21).[159] No two of the 266 figures are alike
in face or form, though each is perfect in grace and beauty.[160] In
the central compartment the seraphim (red) are on Christ's right, the
cherubim (blue) on His left. In the compartment to Christ's left are,
amongst other patriarchs and saints, Abraham with the sword, Noah
with the ark, Moses with the tables of law, Aaron with his name on his
mitre, and below them St. Agnes with the Lamb, and St. Catherine with
her wheel. The martyrs bear palms in their hands; some wear wreaths
of roses, others the crown of thorns. In the compartment to Christ's
left are the Virgin, St. Peter with the keys, and the Evangelists. On
the extreme ends on either side are those of the painter's brother
Dominicans, in their black robes, who have joined the company of the
"Blessed."

    Multitudes--multitudes--stood up in bliss,
      Made equal to the angels, glorious, fair;
    With harps, palms, wedding-garments, kiss of peace,
      And crowned and haloed hair.

    Each face looked one way like a moon new-lit,
      Each face looked one way toward its Sun of Love;
    Drank love, and bathed in love, and mirrored it,
      And knew no end thereof.

    Glory touched glory, on each blessèd head,
      Hands locked dear hands never to sunder more:
    These were the new-begotten from the dead
      Whom the great birthday bore.

  CHRISTINA ROSSETTI: _From House to Home_.

This picture was formerly the predella of an altar-piece in San
Domenico at Fiesole. It was sold by the monks in 1826 to the Prussian
Consul in Rome, from whose nephew it was purchased for our Gallery.
"The price paid was £3500. The additional and incidental expenses, in
consequence of the demands of the Roman Government before allowing the
exportation, were unusually great. Those demands, ostensibly founded
on the excellence and celebrity of the picture, were admitted to be
partly also suggested by the state of the Papal finances." The British
Consul finally paid £700 for the permission of exportation (_Director's
Report_, 1861). The altar-piece to which our picture belonged remains
sadly damaged _in situ_.


664. THE DEPOSITION IN THE TOMB.

  _Roger van der Weyden_[161] (Early Flemish: 1400-1464).
  _See also_ (p. xix)

      This painter was born at Tournai, where he was known as Rogelet
      de la Pasture. He afterwards went to Brussels, where he
      assumed his Flemish name, and where in 1436 he was appointed
      town painter. For the Hall of Justice there he painted four
      pictures, which are now lost, but of which the designs are
      preserved in a set of tapestries in Berne Cathedral. He was
      the chief master (as a teacher, that is) of the early Flemish
      school. It was he who carried Flemish art into Italy (see
      772), where he was in 1449-1450. "Contemporary Italian writers
      laud the pathos, the brilliant colouring, and the exhaustive
      finish of his works." He on his side gained something from the
      study of Italian masters. The composition of many of his great
      works--_e.g._ "The Last Judgment" at Beaune, the "Nativity"
      at Berlin, and "The Adoration of the Magi" at Munich--bears
      evidence of Italian influence. Nearer home, the school of the
      Lower Rhine in its later time was an offshoot of his school:
      and farther up the river, Martin Schongauer, at Colmar, was
      an immediate pupil of his. He set the fashions in several
      subjects--such as descents from the cross, and hundreds of
      followers imitated his designs. What gave his art this wide
      currency was the way in which it united the older religious
      feeling, from which Van Eyck had cut himself adrift, with
      the new naturalism and improved technique which Van Eyck had
      introduced. His French blood, too, gave his art an element of
      vivid emotion, which was lacking in the staid control of Van
      Eyck. He is especially praised for his "representations of
      human desires and dispositions, whether grief, pain, or joy."
      He thus painted for the religious needs of the people at large;
      and though an inferior artist, enjoyed a far wider influence
      than Van Eyck. "Less intensely realistic than Van Eyck, less
      gifted with the desire and the power to reproduce the phenomena
      of nature for their own sake, and in their completeness, he
      thought more," says Sir F. Burton, "of expressing the feelings
      common to him and the pious worshippers for whose edification
      he wrought. His figures exhibit deep, if sometimes rather
      overstrained, pathos. He strove with naïf earnestness to bring
      home to the senses the reality of the incidents connected with
      the last sufferings and death of the Saviour. Still he was
      naturalistic too, in the sense in which that term applies to
      all painters of the early Flemish school, in that he imitated
      with minuteness every object which he thought necessary to his
      compositions; but of the broad principles of chiaroscuro and
      subordination which Van Eyck had so wonderfully grasped, he
      had small perception. His scenes seem filled with the light of
      early morning. His colour, pale in the flesh-tints with greyish
      modelling, is varied and delicately rich in the clothing and
      other stuffs introduced. His landscape abounds in freshness
      and greenth. Thus he transferred to his oil pictures the light
      and brilliance of missal painting, an art which perhaps he had
      himself practised." "He occasionally practised a very different
      technical method from that usually employed in Flanders--that
      is to say, he painted in pure tempera colours on unprimed
      linen, the flesh tints especially being laid on extremely
      thin, so that the texture of the linen remains unhidden. Other
      colours, such as a smalto blue used for draperies, are applied
      in greater body, and the whole is left uncovered by any
      varnish" (Middleton). Of this method the present picture is a
      fine example.

This picture--"one of the most exquisite in feeling of the early
Flemish school" (Poynter)--is full of sincere emotion. "Roger van der
Weyden is especially known by his touching conception of some of the
scenes of the Passion. He excelled in the lull of suppressed feeling.
The picture of the Entombment by him in the National Gallery is as
much more sad to the heart than the passionate Italian conception,
as a deep sigh sometimes than a flood of tears. We could almost
wish those mourners, with their compressed lips, red eyelids, and
slowly trickling tears, would weep more--it would grieve us less. But
evidently the violence of the first paroxysm of grief is over, and
this is the exhaustion after it. The tide is ebbing as with all new
sorrow, too soon to flow again. No finer conception of manly sorrow,
sternly repressed, exists than in the heads of Nicodemus and Joseph of
Arimathea, who devote themselves the more strenuously to their task in
order to conceal their grief. Strange that a painter of such exquisite
refinement of feeling should adhere to so hideous a type of Christ as
that which appears here" (Mrs. Jameson's _History of our Lord_, ii.
246). It is interesting to contrast the figure of Christ with that in
Francia's picture (180). In painting such subjects the Italians of the
best time endured the physical painfulness, the Northern temperament
rejoiced in it. The painters in so doing were only meeting the wishes
of their patrons. There is a contract, for instance, still in existence
in which it is expressly stipulated that the form of our Lord in a
picture ordered at Bruges shall be painted "in all respects like a dead
man."


665. THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST.

  _Piero della Francesca_ (Umbrian: about 1416-1492).

      This great Umbrian master was a native of Borgo San Sepolcro in
      Umbria, but studied in Florence, where it is probable that he
      was a pupil of Paolo Uccello (see 583). A combination of the
      characteristics of the two schools is to be seen in the work
      of Piero, who had at the same time a marked individuality of
      his own. "He has the imaginative impulse, the Umbrian sense
      of an inner, an almost mystic beauty, of a certain aloofness
      from earth and uplifting of the soaring spirit; and yet on
      the other side of his character he is strongly scientific; he
      studies perspective, the projection of shadows, the scheme
      of values; he fills his work with light and atmosphere,
      and improves on the oil methods of the earlier Florentines"
      (Brinton's _Renaissance in Italian Art_, iii. 85). "By dignity
      of portraiture, by loftiness of style, and by a certain
      poetical solemnity of imagination he raised himself above the
      level of the mass of his contemporaries. Those who have once
      seen his fresco of the 'Resurrection' at Borgo San Sepolcro
      [in the Pinacoteca] will never forget the deep impression
      of solitude and aloofness from all earthly things produced
      by it" (Symonds, iii. 170). A copy of this fresco may be
      seen in the Arundel Society's collection. The picture now
      before us also well illustrates the skill in dealing with
      technical difficulties and the solemn grandeur of conception
      which characterise the painter. Piero della Francesca was
      so called after his mother,[162] "Francesca's Peter," for,
      says Vasari, "he had been brought up solely by herself, who
      furthermore assisted him in the attainment of that learning
      to which his good fortune had destined him." He received at
      first a scientific education, and possessed, adds Vasari, "a
      considerable knowledge of Euclid, inasmuch that he understood
      all the most important properties of rectilinear bodies better
      than any other geometrician." In a treatise on perspective,
      written in the vulgar tongue, he reduced the science to "rules
      which have hardly admitted of subsequent improvement." These
      studies influenced Piero's tendencies in art. "The laws of
      aerial perspective, of the harmony of colours, the proportions
      of light and shade, and the position of objects in space were
      equally developed by one whose feeling for precise calculation
      went _pari passu_ with that of pictorial representation.
      In this combination of science and art he was strictly the
      precursor of Leonardo da Vinci. Fra Luca Paccioli, a celebrated
      mathematician, and an intimate friend of Piero, was in later
      years in constant communication with Leonardo" (Layard, i.
      215). Piero probably acquired the new method of oil painting
      from Domenico Veneziano (see 766), whom he assisted in some
      wall paintings in S. Maria Nuova in Florence in 1439, and with
      whom he afterwards worked at Loreto. Some of his best works
      are to be seen in his native city, and at Arezzo he painted a
      remarkable series of frescoes for the church of S. Francesco.
      Piero was also employed at Urbino, where he appears to have
      been the guest of Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi. He worked
      also in Rimini and Ferrara, and was called to Rome to paint two
      frescoes in the Vatican, which were afterwards destroyed to
      make room for the works of Raphael. His later, like his earlier
      years, were devoted to mathematical studies, and in his old
      age "the ban Of blindness struck both palette from his thumb
      And pencil from his finger." Among his pupils Vasari mentions
      Perugino and Signorelli.

A picture of great interest from a technical point of view, as showing
an advancing skill, especially in perspective. The feet of Christ
are finely "foreshortened"; the tops of the mountains are correctly
reflected on the surface of the river in the foreground; in the
middle distance there is a foreshortened view of a street leading to
a fortified town, and the anatomy of the figure stripping himself for
baptism is very carefully rendered. This very realistic figure of a
convert strikes a curious note; Piero's paintings are "the working
out of problems before our very eyes." In these technical respects
Piero resembles Paolo Uccello, while there is also a striking affinity
of style between the landscapes of the two painters. "The peculiar
construction of these landscapes, with steep mountains of an uncommon
type, is the more remarkable because they are the starting-point
of all the later achievements in realistic landscape painting"
(Richter's _Italian Art in the National Gallery_, p. 16). "The study
of natural phenomena," says Mr. Monkhouse, "is everywhere apparent.
The pomegranate trees are the earliest attempt in the National Gallery
to give what may be called the portrait of a particular tree--the
habit of its growth, the special character of its leafage. The hedge
in Uccello's 'Battle of St. Egidio' is the nearest approach to it. He
has striven to imagine the scene as it actually might have happened.
Sundry worthies, in strange rich costumes, look on from a further
bank. Nothing is 'newer' in the picture than the carefully studied
reflections of their garments in the water. The effect, so beautifully
rendered by Burne-Jones in his picture of 'Venus's Looking-Glass,'
Piero was the first to paint, if not to observe" (_In the National
Gallery_, p. 106).

The subject is the baptism in Jordan. Christ, under the shade of a
pomegranate tree, is being "baptized of John in Jordan; and straightway
coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit
like a dove descending upon him" (Mark i. 9, 10). The spiritual feeling
of the scene is enhanced by the sweet presence of the attendant
angels,--crowned with wreaths of flowers, instead of the nimbus. It is
an old belief that angels watch over men's birth, and so too they are
represented as presiding over the new birth, which is typified by the
rite of baptism. "What solemnity in the bearing of Christ as He permits
John to pour over Him the water of Jordan which is flowing in a shallow
stream at his feet! How modest the deportment of the assistant angels
at His side! How the trees, whose every leaf in the dense foliage is
distinctly outlined, seem even to hush their whispers that nothing may
disturb the nearness of God, who looking down from heaven as out of the
far distance, makes his presence felt" (Grimm's _Life of Raphael_, p.
46). This picture, which seems never to have been finished and shows
the under-painting, was formerly the principal altar-piece of the
Priory of St. John the Baptist at Borgo San Sepolcro.


666. THE ANNUNCIATION.

  _Fra Filippo Lippi_ (Florentine: about 1406-1469).

    I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!...
    Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so....
    For me, I think I speak as I was taught;
    I always see the garden and God there
    A-making man's wife: and, my lesson learned,
    The value and significance of flesh,
    I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards....
    Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn,
    Left foot and right foot, go a double step,
    Make his flesh liker and his soul more like,
    Both in their order?

  BROWNING: _Fra Lippo Lippi_.

      This and the companion picture by the same artist (667) were
      painted for Cosmo de' Medici (this one is marked with Cosmo's
      crest--three feathers tied together in a ring), and are
      identified with a story told by Vasari, which Browning worked
      up in his poem on the artist. Cosmo, knowing the artist's ways,
      kept him under lock and key that his work might be the quicker
      done, but Lippi one night contrived a way of escape, and "from
      that time forward," adds Vasari, "Cosmo gave the artist more
      liberty, and was by this means more promptly and effectually
      served by the painter, and was wont to say that men of genius
      were not beasts of burden, but forms of light." Filippo was
      the son of a butcher, and, being left an orphan, was committed
      to the charge of the monks of the Carmelite convent close to
      which his parents had lived. At the age of fourteen or fifteen
      he was induced to take the vows of the order. At this time he
      must have seen Masaccio painting in the famous Branacci chapel
      of the conventual church, S. M. del Carmine. Lippi himself
      executed some works (now destroyed) in the church, and having
      by this time found his true vocation, he was in 1431 permitted
      to leave the convent in order to be free to practise his art.
      Vasari relates that during an excursion on the Adriatic, Lippi
      was taken captive by some Moorish pirates. But after a while
      he found opportunity to draw a whole-length portrait of his
      master with charcoal on a white wall, which the pirates deemed
      so marvellous that they set him at liberty. This tale, however,
      is inconsistent with the facts of Lippi's life as now known
      from documentary evidence. Lippi enjoyed the patronage of the
      Medici, and he received sinecure offices also from the Pope.
      During the years 1431-53 many of his best panel pictures were
      painted. Among these may be mentioned the "Coronation of the
      Virgin" (Academy, Florence), in which is introduced a portrait
      of himself with the tonsure, and bearing a scroll inscribed
      _Is perfecit opus_, and the "Virgin adoring the Infant, borne
      by two Angels" (Uffizi), which was selected by Ruskin for
      one of his four "Lesson Photographs," and is fully described
      by him in _Fors_, 1875, p. 307. At the end of the period in
      question Lippi undertook the principal work of his life, which
      occupied him for several years, the series of frescoes in the
      choir of the Duomo at Prato. "These magnificent paintings,"
      says Morelli, "were executed at about the same time as those
      equally celebrated by Mantegna in the Cappella degli Eremitani
      at Padua. Whoever would learn to know the aspirations and
      artistic power of that period in the highest utterances, has
      only to study those two wall-paintings. If we are carried away
      by Fra Filippo's grandeur of conception and his pure dramatic
      vividness, we are enthralled, on the other hand, by Mantegna's
      greater fulness of expression and his perfect execution"
      (_German Galleries_, p. 71). While engaged on these frescoes,
      the friar-painter was appointed chaplain to the convent of
      Santa Margherita. Here he became enamoured of one of the nuns,
      Lucrezia Buti, and having persuaded the abbess to let Lucrezia
      sit to him for a study of the Madonna, he carried her off
      to his house. She remained with him for two years, and bore
      him a son, the renowned painter, Filippino Lippi (293). Her
      portrait is to be seen in the Virgin of the "Assumption," now
      in the Communal Gallery at Prato. She was induced to return to
      the convent, and took fresh vows, but again escaped to seek
      the friar's protection. The scandal now became serious, and
      Filippo was threatened with punishment. But Cosmo de' Medici
      intervened, and the Pope issued a bull releasing the erring
      pair from their vows and sanctioning their marriage. Lippi's
      last work was a series of frescoes in the choir of the Duomo
      at Spoleto. Here he died, from an illness ascribed by some to
      poison, leaving the work to be finished by his assistant, Fra
      Diamante. He was buried in the Duomo. Over his tomb Lorenzo de'
      Medici caused a monument to be erected, and Poliziano wrote
      Latin couplets to commemorate the fame of the friar-painter.
      "His art," says Ruskin, "is the finest, out and out, that
      ever monk did, which I attribute myself to what is usually
      considered faultful in him, his having run away with a pretty
      novice out of a convent.... The real gist of the matter is that
      Lippi did, openly and bravely, what the highest prelates in the
      Church did basely and in secret; also he loved, where they only
      lusted; and he has been proclaimed therefore by them--and too
      foolishly believed by us--to have been a shameful person"[163]
      (_Fors Clavigera_, 1872, xxii. 4; _Ariadne Florentina_, vi.
      § 5 _n._). In other words, Lippi, while true to his religion,
      did not shut himself out from the world--to use the theological
      language, he "sanctified," not "crucified," the flesh. His
      pictures are "nobly religious work,--examples of the most
      perfect unison of religious myth with faithful realism of human
      nature yet produced in this world" (_Fors Clavigera_, 1876, p.
      187). "The human element, with him so naïve and spontaneous,
      gives," says Burton, "a singular charm to his works. His
      colour is golden and broad, and his drapery finely cast and of
      fascinatingly broken tones." Among his pupils (besides his son)
      were Pesellino and Botticelli.

Here the traditional legend of the Annunciation is faithfully adhered
to, and there is much "unusually mystic spiritualism of conception" in
the dove, the Spirit of God, proceeding in rays of golden light from
the hand of an unseen Presence; but the painter delights to elaborate
also every element of human interest and worldly beauty. Note, for
instance, the prettiness of the angel's face, the gracefulness of
his figure, the sheen of his wings, and the dainty splendour of the
Virgin's chamber.


667. ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST AND SAINTS.

  _Fra Filippo Lippi_ (Florentine: 1406-1469). _See 666._

Lippi's general characteristics, noticed above under the companion
picture (666), may again be seen here. The "other saints" are Sts.
Francis (on the spectator's right, with the stigmata), Lawrence, and
Cosmas; on the left Sts. Damianus, Anthony, and Peter Martyr--this
last a particularly "human" saint. Lippi was a monk himself, and drew
his saints in the human resemblance of good "brothers" that he knew.
"I will tell you what Lippi must have taught any boy whom he loved.
First, humility, and to live in joy and peace, injuring no man--if
such innocence might be. Nothing is so manifest in every face by him
as its gentleness and rest." It is characteristic of Lippi, too,
that the saints should be represented sitting in so pretty a garden.
Secondly,--"a little thing it seems, but was a great one,--love of
flowers. No one draws such lilies or such daisies as Lippi. Botticelli
beat him afterwards in roses, but never in lilies" (_Ariadne
Florentina_, vi. § 9).


668. THE BEATO FERRETTI.

  _Carlo Crivelli_ (Venetian: painted 1468-1493). _See 602._

Gabriele Ferretti (to whose family Pope Pius IX. belonged) was Superior
of the Franciscans in the March of Ancona, and died in 1456. Thirty
years later his body was found incorrupt, and was deposited in a
sarcophagus in the church of S. Francesco ad Alto at Ancona. It is
conjectured that the present picture was painted for that church in
commemoration of the discovery of the body. The artist shows us the
holy man in enjoyment of the vision of the beatified. "The Beato (in
Franciscan habit) has been reading or praying, at the entrance of a
cave near a church, in a quiet country spot from which a road leads to
a town in the distance. Suddenly in the sky the Virgin and Child appear
(surrounded by the _Vesica_ glory, see No. 564). He has laid down his
book, put off his sandals, and kneels in prayer and adoration.... The
masterly treatment of the drapery, the perfection of the forms, the
architecture, the sense of spaciousness in the landscape, all point
to the maturity of Crivelli's art.... The landscape, for general
effect, is one of his best, though the treatment of the rocks and of
the foreground is still conventional. The most striking objects in
it are the leafless tree-stems, the counterpart, as it were, of the
hard and bony human figures of which he was so fond, and therefore
an illustration of his love for anatomical forms. His seeking after
realism again appears in the two ducks painted with minute precision.
In contrast to them we get the festoon of fruit at the top of the
picture, illustrating the conventional and decorative aspect of his
art. No picture of his suggests more completely both the range and the
limitations of Crivelli" (G. M. Rushforth: _Carlo Crivelli_, pp. 65,
87).


669. ST. SEBASTIAN, ST. ROCH AND ST. DEMETRIUS.

  _L'Ortolano_ (Ferrarese: died about 1525).

      Giambattista Benvenuti, called L'Ortolano (the gardener) from
      his father's occupation, is still a problem in art history,
      details of his life being so uncertain that even the existence
      of him is disputed by some critics. There is, however,
      documentary evidence which proves his existence. This noble
      picture was, until 1844, the altar-piece of the parochial
      church of Bondeno, near Ferrara, where it was generally
      considered the painter's masterpiece. His life and works are
      generally confounded with those of Garofalo, to which painter
      Morelli ascribes the present work. "Garofalo's characteristics
      are apparent in the form of hand, the brown flesh-tints, the
      drapery, the landscape, and the small stones in the foreground"
      (_Italian Painters_: The Borghese and Doria-Pamfili Galleries
      in Rome, p. 208). On the other hand, Venturi has drawn up
      a list of works, showing common characteristics and common
      differences from Garofalo, which he therefore attributes to
      Ortolano. To this list should be added Lord Wimborne's "St.
      Joseph presenting the Infant Christ." Among the characteristics
      noticeable in our picture are houses planted on posts; long,
      straight streaks in the background turning to white; trees with
      large, sparse, yellowing leaves. "Garofalo never achieved the
      rapt expression of St. Demetrius" (see the argument of Venturi
      quoted in Burlington Fine Arts Club's Catalogue, 1894).

In the centre is St. Sebastian, tied to a tree, and pierced with
arrows; whilst in the foreground is a cross-bow, lying uselessly. For
the story is that Sebastian was a noble youth who was promoted to the
command of a company in the Prætorian Guards by the Emperor Diocletian:

      "At this time he was secretly a Christian, but his faith only
      rendered him more loyal to his masters; more faithful in all
      his engagements; more mild, more charitable; while his favour
      with his prince, and his popularity with the troops, enabled
      him to protect those who were persecuted for Christ's sake,
      and to convert many to the truth. Among his friends were two
      young men of noble family, soldiers like himself; their names
      were Marcus and Marcellinus." And when they were tortured for
      being Christians, Sebastian, "neglecting his own safety, rushed
      forward, and, by his exhortations, encouraged them rather to
      die than to renounce their Redeemer. Then Diocletian ordered
      that Sebastian also should be bound to a stake and shot to
      death with arrows. The archers left him for dead; but in the
      middle of the night, Irene, the widow of one of his martyred
      friends, came with her attendants to take his body away, that
      she might bury it honourably; and it was found that none of
      the arrows had pierced him in a vital part, and that he yet
      breathed. So they carried him to her house, and his wounds were
      dressed; and the pious widow tended him night and day, until
      he had wholly recovered" (Mrs. Jameson: _Sacred and Legendary
      Art_, 1850, pp. 343, 344).

This legend was one of the special favourites with the mediæval
painters: "the display of beautiful form, permitted and even
consecrated by devotion, is so rare in Christian representations, that
we cannot wonder at the avidity with which this subject was seized"
(_ibid._ p. 346). It is instructive to compare the noble use of the
subject made in this picture, in which the great technical skill
of the painter is subordinate to the beautiful display of a sacred
legend, with the "St. Sebastian" of Pollajuolo (292), in which, as we
have seen, the subject is used solely--and painfully--for the display
of such skill. With St. Sebastian is here represented, on his left,
his contemporary, St. Demetrius. He is clad in armour, for he also
served under Diocletian, being Proconsul of Greece, and like St.
Sebastian used his high office to preach Christ. On the other side is
St. Roch (for whose legend see 735). He is a much later saint (about
A.D. 1300), and is associated with St. Sebastian as another patron of
the plague-stricken. Arrows have been from all antiquity the emblem
of pestilence; and from the association of arrows with his legend,
St. Sebastian succeeded in Christian times to the honours enjoyed by
Apollo, in Greek mythology, as the protector against pestilence.


670. A KNIGHT OF ST. STEPHEN.

  _Angelo Bronzino_ (Florentine: 1502-1572). _See 649._
  _See also_ (p. xx)

He wears the robes of his order (with a red cross bordered with
yellow), an order established by Cosimo, Duke of Tuscany, and charged
with the defence of the coasts against pirates. The knight is a good
specimen of the courtier aristocracy with which Cosimo surrounded
himself. The knights of St. Stephen afterwards won much honour by their
prowess, but they were men of culture also: notice that this one holds
a book in his hand, which rests on a table richly carved in the taste
of the time. This portrait was presented to the nation by Mr. Watts,
R.A.


671. MADONNA AND CHILD ENTHRONED

  _Garofalo_ (Ferrarese: 1481-1559). _See 81._

This fine picture was originally the principal altar-piece of
the church of San Guglielmo (St. William) at Ferrara. Hence the
introduction of that saint (on our left)--a beautiful face, into which
the artist has put, one may think, all his local piety. The saint
is in armour, for William--the institutor of the hermit order of
Guglielmites--was originally a soldier, and was "given," says one of
his biographers, "unto a licentious manner of living, too common among
persons of that profession." It was to escape from such temptations
that he became a holy penitent, and fought thenceforward in mountain
solitudes, as a soldier of Christ against the flesh and the devil.
Beside him stands St. Clara, "the very ideal of a gray sister, sedate
and sweet, sober, steadfast, and demure." She gazes on a crucifix, for
she too had renounced the pomps and vanities of the world. Her wealth
of golden hair was cut off, it is said, by St. Francis; her fortune she
gave to hospitals, and herself became the foundress of the Order of
"Poor Clares." St. Francis stands on the other side of the throne, and
besides him is "good St. Anthony" (see under 776).


672. HIS OWN PORTRAIT.

  _Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See 45._

"This portrait, dated 1640, describes the man well--strong and robust,
with powerful head, firm and compressed lips and determined chin, with
heavy eyebrows, separated by a deep vertical furrow, and with eyes of
keen penetrating glance,--altogether a self-reliant man, who would
carry out his own ideas, careless whether his popularity waxed or
waned" (J. F. White in _Encyclopædia Britannica_).


673. "SALVATOR MUNDI."

  _Antonello da Messina_ (Venetian: 1444-1493)

      A picture of special interest as being the earliest known
      work (it is dated 1465) of Antonello, of Messina in Sicily,
      who is famous as the man by whom the art of painting in oils,
      as perfected by the Van Eycks (see 186), was introduced into
      Venice. Vasari's story is that Antonello saw, on a visit to
      Naples, a picture by John Van Eyck, in which the brilliancy
      and fine fusion of the tints so struck him that he forthwith
      set out for Flanders, ingratiated himself with Van Eyck, and
      learnt from him the secret of his method. But the dates do
      not agree with this story. For Van Eyck died in 1440, and
      Antonello must therefore have been born early in the century,
      whereas, on the contrary, Vasari expressly states that he died
      in 1493, aged forty-nine. More probably Antonello learnt the
      Flemish technique from the painters of that school who are
      known to have been at Naples in the middle of the fifteenth
      century. In his native town, in the church of S. Gregorio,
      is a triptych by him, dated 1473. In the same year he was at
      Venice, where he remained until his death. "His practical
      mastery of the new method, still unknown in the city of the
      Lagoons, of glazing in oil colours a ground laid in tempera,
      must have given Antonello a higher status at Venice than
      his intrinsic merits as an artist would have warranted. We
      see that he is at once honoured with a commission from the
      wardens of S. Cassiano. Unhappily the altar-piece there, so
      highly praised by Matteo Collaccio and Sabellico, and signed
      with the year 1473, has long since disappeared. And not only
      did the church dignitaries of Venice patronise him, but the
      patricians were eager to have their likenesses taken on the
      new principle practised by Antonello; and, to judge by the
      number of portraits he turned out in those years, he must for
      a time have been the most popular portrait painter in Venice"
      (Morelli). Of his portraits there is a good example in our
      Gallery (1141). The splendid portrait in the Louvre is dated
      1475; that in the Berlin Gallery, 1478. The "Crucifixion" in
      our Gallery is dated 1477. "It is evident to me," says Morelli,
      "that Antonello gradually formed himself by studying the works
      and seeking the society of the great Venetian masters, till he
      reached that degree of perfection which we miss in his early
      Ecce Homos and admire in his portraits of 1475-78. His Italian
      nature gradually works its way through the Flemish shell in
      which his first master had encased his hand as well as mind. In
      this transformation of Antonello as an artist Giovanni Bellini
      had obviously the greatest share. Whoever visits the churches
      of Messina, and of the towns and villages along that eastern
      coast of Sicily as far as Syracuse, will still find in many
      of them Madonnas, whether in colour or in marble, that remind
      him of Antonello and Giambellino. And not only did Antonello
      act powerfully on his own Sicilian countrymen; we also discern
      his influence in several portraits by painters of Upper
      Italy--for instance, those of Solario." No. 923, for example,
      the portrait of a Venetian Senator, by that master, is strongly
      reminiscent of Antonello's style. In fact, as Sir F. Burton
      says, "to Antonello and his Flemish education is due that type
      of portraiture which we find among the Venetian and North
      Italian painters of his time, and which, under a southern sun,
      and in the hands of a Titian, expanded itself in the noblest
      form." (The above account of Antonello follows Morelli: see his
      _Italian Masters in German Galleries_, pp. 376-390).

Christ as the "Saviour of the World," stands with his finger on the
edge of a parapet, giving the blessing and gazing into eternity. The
picture, being dated 1465,[164] must have been painted by Antonello in
his twenty-first year. Both in conception and in the ruddy complexion
peculiar to the school of Van Eyck (see 222 and 290) it suggests a
Flemish influence. Notice also the _pentimenti_ (or corrections):
the right hand and border of the tunic were originally higher, and
their forms, obliterated by the painter, have now in course of time
disappeared. This again shows the hand of an experienced artist.


674. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Paris Bordone_ (Venetian: 1500-1570). _See 637._

A splendid specimen of this painter's portraits, and a type of the
face which meets one in nearly every Gallery of Europe; for Bordone,
who had (as we have seen) a great vogue as a lady's portrait painter,
had yet a way, says Ridolfi, of making such works appear more like
fancy portraits than individual portraits. This one is of a girl of
the Brignole family, aged eighteen, according to the inscription. In
the Brignole Palace at Genoa (now the property of the town) are two
magnificent portraits by Bordone. The type here is that of a cruel and
somewhat sensual beauty--the eyes, especially, being, "like Mars, to
threaten or command"--

    Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
      Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
    The heavy white limbs, and the cruel
      Red mouth like a venomous flower.

  SWINBURNE: _Dolores_.

Since the above note was written, Mr. H. Schütz Wilson has suggested,
with some plausibility, that the portrait is of Bianca Cappello
(1542-1587), "as pre-eminent in sumptuous voluptuous loveliness, as
she was in the crime of her day in Italy." "In the deadly calm of the
almost inscrutable lineaments of this remarkable portrait, in which
charm and grace are shown behind so much that is terrible, so much
that is earthly, sensual, devilish, in those awful eyes, and in that
cruel 'red mouth, like a venomous flower,' we see, as I fancy," says
Mr. Wilson, "not an obscure girl of a noble family of Genoa, but the
counterfeit presentment of the romantically wicked Renaissance heroine,
the fair and evil Grand Duchess of Tuscany" (_Pall Mall Gazette_,
November 22, 1888).


679. THE PORTRAIT OF AN ASTRONOMER.

  _Ferdinand Bol_ (Dutch: 1616-1680).

      Bol was the most distinguished of Rembrandt's pupils in
      portraiture. He was born at Dordrecht, and settled at
      Amsterdam, where he acquired burgess rights in 1652. One of
      Bol's portraits in the Louvre has attained the honour of being
      hung in the Salon Carré. His "Four Regents of the Leprosy
      Hospital" at Amsterdam is the painter's masterpiece, and one
      of the finest works of the Dutch School. Bol's pictures are
      remarkable for a prevailing yellow tone. Up to about the
      year 1660 he seems to have remained the pupil of Rembrandt.
      "Unfortunately he did not remain faithful to his early
      teaching. He made sacrifices to the taste of his time, and
      abandoned the sober and grave figures, the severe and sustained
      method of painting, the powerful light and shade of his school,
      to seek a fresh source of success in overwhelming allegory and
      in the imitation of Rubens. This was his ruin. His later works,
      painted in full light, are very inferior to those of an earlier
      date; their colouring is hard, glaring, and discordant, and
      in composition they are frequently bombastic and pretentious"
      (Havard: _The Dutch School of Painting_, p. 93).

The sitter is conjectured to be an astronomer, from the globes on the
table before him and from the look on his face as of a man dwelling
among the clouds. The picture is signed, and dated 1652.


680. THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES.

  _Van Dyck_ (Flemish: 1599-1641). _See 49._

Painted by Van Dyck from the large picture by Rubens at Mechlin, for
an engraver to work from. "One of the too numerous brown sketches in
the manner of the Flemish School, which seem to me rather done for
the sake of wiping the brush clean than of painting anything. There
is no colour in it, and no light and shade;--but a certain quantity
of bitumen is rubbed about so as to slip more or less greasily into
the shape of figures; and one of St. John's (or St. James's) legs
is suddenly terminated by a wriggle of white across it, to signify
that he is standing in the sea" (_Art of England_, p. 44). Ruskin
notices the picture as an example of the art which was assailed by the
Pre-Raphaelites. A word-picture of the same scene in the Pre-Raphaelite
manner, with its literal and close realisation, will be found in
_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iv. § 16.


685. SHOWERY WEATHER.

  _Meindert Hobbema_ (Dutch: 1638-1709).

      Hobbema, who disputes with Ruysdael the place of best Dutch
      landscape painter, was a friend of the latter, and perhaps his
      pupil: certainly works of the two are sometimes remarkably
      alike. Thus it has been pointed out that Hobbema's No. 996
      shows the influence of Ruysdael, whilst Ruysdael's No. 986
      recalls Hobbema's. Often, too, they painted the same country;
      compare _e.g._ No. 986 with Hobbema's No. 832. Like Ruysdael,
      too, Hobbema was a painter without honour in his own country,
      and nine-tenths of his known works are in England, where he was
      first appreciated, and where he was the means of influencing
      many of our landscape painters, notably Nasmyth. His pictures
      were often ascribed to other painters, now considered greatly
      his inferiors, in order to obtain better prices. It has been
      remarked as a curious fact that until the middle of the
      eighteenth century no engraver thought it worth while to
      reproduce any of Hobbema's pictures; and Sir Joshua Reynolds
      in his _Tour in Holland_ (1781) makes no reference to Hobbema,
      though he must have seen some of his pictures. Even a hundred
      years ago they were not much sought after; now they are more
      valued than those of any landscape painter and fetch very
      large prices at auctions. Recently one of them sold for as
      much as £8820. This appreciation is due in part to the fact
      that Hobbemas are very rare; the known works by him number
      hardly more than a hundred. Of Hobbema's life very little
      is recorded. His name (like that of Alma Tadema) betokens
      Frisian origin. His birthplace is unknown, but he appears to
      have been born at Amsterdam, and to have been the scholar of
      Jacob Ruysdael in landscape painting. Ruysdael was the witness
      at his marriage. This was in 1668. In the same year he was
      appointed one of the sworn gaugers for the excise of the town.
      "Thus, a century before Burns, fortune played upon one of the
      greatest of landscape painters the same trick that she played
      in his case upon the most spontaneous of poets." Hobbema was
      not the only painter of his time who had to eke out a bare
      subsistence by employment more lucrative than the production
      of masterpieces. Salomon van Ruysdael was also a frame-maker;
      Van Goyen speculated in houses, picture-dealing, and tulips;
      and Jan Steen was an innkeeper. The coincidence of Hobbema's
      marriage and his appointment as gauger of wines and oil was not
      by chance. The archives throw a curious light upon the public
      morals of Amsterdam at the time of its greatest prosperity. By
      a deed executed in the month of his marriage, Hobbema admits
      that he owes his appointment to the influence of a companion
      of his wife, like her a servant in the employment of the
      burgomaster, and in consideration of this he agrees to pay her,
      so long as he holds the place, an annual sum of 250 florins.
      Posterity owes this servant of the burgomaster a grudge, for
      after taking up the appointment, Hobbema scarcely painted
      any more. The post cannot, however, have been lucrative, for
      he died in evil circumstances--in a house directly opposite
      to that in which Rembrandt had died forty years before. The
      painter of works, any one of which is now worth a small fortune
      to its possessor, was buried in a pauper's grave.

      In spite of the resemblance to Ruysdael above noted, Hobbema's
      best and most characteristic works are quite distinct.
      Ruysdael is the painter of the solitude of nature, of rocks
      and waterfalls; Hobbema of the Dutch "fields with dwellings
      sprinkled o'er." The pervading tone of Ruysdael is dark
      and sombre; that of Hobbema is drowsy and still. A second
      characteristic of Hobbema is his fondness for oak foliage, and
      a certain "nigglingness" in his execution of it. See _e.g._
      832, 833. "They (Hobbema and Both) can paint oak leafage
      faithfully, but do not know where to stop, and by doing too
      much, lose the truth of all, lose the very truth of detail
      at which they aim, for all their minute work only gives two
      leaves to nature's twenty. They are evidently incapable of
      even thinking of a tree, much more of drawing it, except leaf
      by leaf; they have no notion nor sense of simplicity, mass,
      or obscurity, and when they come to distance, where it is
      totally impossible that leaves should be separately seen,
      being incapable of conceiving or rendering the grand and quiet
      forms of truth, they are reduced to paint their bushes with
      dots and touches expressive of leaves three feet broad each."
      "No word," Ruskin elsewhere adds, "has been more harmfully
      misused than that ugly one of 'niggling.' I should be glad if
      it were entirely banished from service and record. The only
      essential question about drawing is whether it be right or
      wrong; that it be small or large, swift or slow, is a matter of
      convenience only. But so far as the word may be legitimately
      used at all, it belongs especially to such execution as this
      of Hobbema's--execution which substitutes, on whatever scale,
      a mechanical trick or habit of hand for true drawing of known
      or intended forms." A second objection to Hobbema's method may
      be mentioned besides its "trickiness." His "niggling" touch
      is extended from the foreground to objects farther off, and
      thus "a middle distance of Hobbema involves a contradiction
      in terms; it states a distance by perspective, which it
      contradicts by distinctness of detail" (_Modern Painters_, vol.
      i. pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. v. § 17, sec. vi. ch. i. § 22; vol. v.
      pt. vi. ch. v. § 6). In spite, however, of such defects, the
      works of Hobbema have an enduring charm for their incisiveness
      of touch, and warmth of light. He had not Ruysdael's variety
      nor his depth of poetic feeling. The forest glade and the
      watermill are almost all he paints. But these he paints so
      firmly and decisively that they live for ever, and upon them he
      casts a warm and golden tone which never fails to please.


686. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Hans Memlinc_ (Early Flemish: 1430-1494).

      It is only in the Hospital of St. John at Bruges that the art
      of this exquisite painter can be properly studied. There,
      as among the Fra Angelicos at San Marco in Florence and the
      Giottos at the Arena in Padua, one may see the great works
      of a mediæval painter in the very surroundings which first
      produced them. (Copies of some of Memlinc's works at Bruges and
      elsewhere are included in the Arundel Society's collection.)
      The Hospital is, as it were, a shrine of Memlinc. Around this
      fact legends grew. In one of the pictures, it was said, a
      portrait of the artist might be discovered; on the sculptured
      ornaments of a porch enframing one of its subjects, an incident
      of the master's life might be traced,--his danger as he lay
      senseless in the street, his rescue as charitable people
      carried his body to the hospital. It came to be told how the
      great artist began life as a soldier who went to the wars
      under Charles the Bold, and came back riddled with wounds from
      the field of Nancy. Wandering homeward in a disabled state in
      1477, he fainted in the streets of Bruges, and was cured by
      the Hospitallers. Unknown to them and a stranger to Bruges, he
      gave tangible proofs of his skill to the brethren of St. John,
      and showed his gratitude by refusing payment for a picture he
      had painted. Unfortunately all this is a myth. Of his real life
      little is known, but it is enough to refute the legends that
      for so long passed current. In 1477 he was under contract to
      furnish an altar-piece for the guild chapel of the booksellers
      of Bruges; this picture, preserved under the name of the "Seven
      Griefs of Mary," is now one of the principal treasures of the
      Gallery of Turin. His many pictures for the Hospitallers were
      painted in 1479 and 1480. He was born at Mayence on the Rhine.
      His name (which should not be spelt Memling) was probably
      derived from the town of Memmelinck (now Medenblik) in the
      north-east of Holland, to which place his family presumably
      belonged. He is known from the town records to have been
      settled in Bruges in his own house in 1479. He must have been
      a citizen of some wealth, for in the next year he was one of
      those who contributed to a loan raised by Maximilian of Austria
      to push hostilities against France. In 1487 he lost his wife.
      In 1494 he died, his children being still minors, and was
      buried in the Church of St. Giles (see a document cited in the
      _Athenæum_ of 2nd February 1889).

      This is all that documentary evidence has disclosed about
      Memlinc's life. If the evidence of his pictures may be taken,
      his life must have been gentle and peaceful. For Memlinc's
      place in the history of art is among the leaders of the
      "Purist" School (see under 663). He was, we may say, the
      Fra Angelico of Flanders. In technique he used the methods
      perfected by the Van Eycks. "In drawing a comparison between
      Memlinc and his predecessors and contemporaries,[165] he
      is found inferior to John Van Eyck in power of colour and
      chiaroscuro, as well as in searching portraiture; to Van der
      Weyden in dramatic force; to Dierick Bouts and Gheeraert
      David in beauty and finish of landscape" (Weale's monograph
      on Memlinc, published by the Arundel Society). But Memlinc
      had a sentiment and an ideal of his own to which none of his
      Flemish contemporaries attained. "Van Eyck saw with his eye,
      Memlinc begins to see with his spirit. The one copied and
      imitated; the other copies, imitates,--and transfigures. Van
      Eyck, without any thought of an ideal, reproduced the virile
      types which passed before his eyes. Memlinc dreams as he looks,
      chooses what is most lovable and delicate in human forms, and
      creates above all as his feminine type a choice being who was
      unknown before his time, and has disappeared since. They are
      women, but women seen according to the tender predilections
      of a spirit in love with grace, nobility, beauty." Memlinc's
      men, on the other hand, do not compare advantageously with Van
      Eyck's. There is more vigour in the latter, more framework,
      more muscle, more blood. "Memlinc's art is very human, but
      there is in it no trace of the villainies and atrocities of
      his time. His ideal is his own. It foreshadowed perhaps the
      Bellinis, the Botticellis, the Peruginos, but not Leonardo, nor
      the Tuscans, nor the Romans of the Renaissance. Imagine in the
      midst of the horror of the century a privileged spot, a sort of
      angelic retreat where the passions are silenced and troubles
      cease, where men pray and worship, where physical and moral
      deformities are transfigured, where new sentiments come into
      being and sweet usages grow up like the lilies: imagine this
      and you will have an idea of the unique soul of Memlinc and of
      the miracle which he works in his pictures" (Fromentin: _Les
      Maitres d'Autrefois_).

In front is a portrait of the donor of the picture. On the Virgin's
left is St. George with the dragon--not a very dreadful dragon,
either--"they do not hurt or destroy" in the peaceful gardens that
Memlinc fancied. Notice how the peaceful idea is continued in the man
returning to his pleasant home in the background to the left. The
Virgin herself is typical of the feminine idea in early Flemish art.
"It must be borne in mind that the people of the fifteenth century
still lived in an age when the language of symbols was rich and widely
understood.... The high forehead of the Virgin and wide arching brows
tell of her intellectual power, her rich long hair figures forth
the fulness of her life, her slim figure and tiny mouth symbolise
her purity, her mild eyes with their drooping eyelids discover her
devoutness, her bent head speaks of humility. The supreme and evident
virtue which reigns in all these Madonnas is an absolute purity of
heart" (Conway's _Early Flemish Painters_, pp. 109, 110).


687. ST. VERONICA.

  _Meister Wilhelm of Cologne_ (Early German: living in 1380).

      A work of interest as being by the first artist who emerges
      in the North as an individual painter--painting before his
      time being a mere appendage of other arts and the work solely
      of guilds. This "Master William," who is mentioned in an old
      chronicle as having "painted a man as though he were alive,"
      was a native of Herle, near Cologne, and attained a prominent
      position in the latter town.

The subject of this picture is the compassionate woman whose door
Christ passed when bearing his cross to Calvary. Seeing the drops of
agony on his brow she wiped his face with her napkin, and the true
image (_Vera Icon_: hence her name) of Christ remained miraculously
impressed upon it--the Christ-like deed thus imprinting itself and
abiding ever with her. The subject of the picture gives it a further
historical interest as being suggestive of the mystics, the "Friends of
God," as they called themselves, who were preaching in the Rhine Valley
at this time, and under whose influence this early school of painting
arose. "The mystic is one who claims to be able to see God with the
inner vision of the soul. He studies to be quiet that his still soul
may reflect the face of God"--even as did the cloth of St. Veronica
(Beard's _Hibbert Lectures_).


690. "HIS OWN PORTRAIT."[166]

  _Andrea del Sarto_ (Florentine: 1486-1531).


      The cabinet pictures of Andrea del Sarto, "the faultless
      painter," are well known to all visitors in the great galleries
      of Europe. There is a certain mannerism in them which makes
      them very easy of recognition. His type of Madonna is constant,
      for it was taken from the beautiful wife whom he loved so
      well, and who requited his love so ill. In his angels there
      is a delicate, misty beauty; and over all his works there is
      "that peculiar softness, harmony, and delicacy of colouring
      which the Italians call _morbidezza_, and which is to be
      seen in its perfection in the 'Madonna di San Francesco' in
      the Uffizi." That Holy Family (painted in 1517) is generally
      considered his masterpiece, and may be taken as the supreme
      type of similar pictures in all the galleries. Another typical
      work is the "Charity" of the Louvre (painted 1518). But it is
      only in Florence among his frescoes--now unhappily fading,
      but preserved in part by copies in the Arundel Society's
      collection--the frescoes of the Santissima Annunziata, the
      convent of S. Salvi, and, above all, the cloister of the
      Scalzo, that a full conception of Andrea's power can be
      obtained. "There only," says Mr. Swinburne, "can one trace and
      tell how great a painter and how various he was. There only,
      but surely there, can the influence and pressure of the things
      of time on his immortal spirit be understood.... In the little
      cloister of the Scalzo there is such exultation and exuberance
      of young power, of fresh passion and imagination, that only by
      the innate grace can one recognise the hand of the master whom
      hitherto we knew by the works of his after life, when the gift
      of grace had survived the gift of invention. This and all other
      gifts it did survive; all pleasure of life and power of mind.
      All these his charm of touch, his sweetness of execution, his
      'Elysian beauty, melancholy grace' outlived and blossomed in
      their dust" (Mr. Swinburne's eloquent piece on this painter's
      works is in the first series of _Essays and Studies_, where
      also are some notes on the master's drawings in the Uffizi
      collection).

      The painter's life is told in great detail and with much
      vivacity by Vasari, to whose pages every reader should turn.
      He was the pupil of Piero di Cosimo, and the friend and
      fellow-worker of Franciabigio. All their spare, time, we are
      told, was spent in drawing from the cartoons of Michelangelo
      and Leonardo. "After the exhibition of Michelangelo's
      celebrated 'Cartoon of Pisa,' in 1506, he became a decided
      imitator of that painter in design: in colour and light and
      shade Fra Bartolommeo appears to have been his model." His
      celebrated frescoes in the convent of the Annunziata (not
      completed till 1514) were among his earliest works. Those in
      the Scalzo were done in 1514. In 1517 he married, and in 1518
      he went to Paris, returning to Florence in the following year.
      The story that he embezzled sums of money given him by the king
      for the purchase of pictures is open to suspicion, since the
      accounts of the king have been discovered. No trace of such
      moneys occurs, nor did the king ever make any effort to obtain
      restitution. Andrea died of the plague at the early age of
      forty-five.

Browning's poem, in which he sets forth the pathos of the artist's
life, is the best commentary on this beautiful portrait--so masterly
in workmanship, so rich in suggestion of character. The real name of
Andrea del Sarto--"Andrew of the Tailor," so called from his father's
trade--was Andrea d'Agnolo: his monogram, formed of two inverted A's,
may here be seen on the background to the left. The Italians called him
"the faultless painter": faultless, they meant, in all the technical
requirements of painting--

              All is silver-grey,
    Placid and perfect with my art.

But men may be "faultily faultless"; and what he lacked was just the
one thing needful--the consecration and the poet's dream, which lift
many works by less skilful hands than his into the higher region of
imaginative art--

    Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
    Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,...
    My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.

And the self-reproach was not less bitter for the knowledge of "what
might have been." There is a story that Michael Angelo visited his
studio, and said afterwards to Raphael--

    "Friend, there's a certain little sorry scrub
    "Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how,
    "Who, were he set to plan and execute
    "As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,
    "Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!"

Yet Andrea himself too was once pricked on by kings. Two pictures of
his had been sent to Francis I., who thereupon invited the painter to
his court. And there for a time he worked and was honoured; but in the
midst of it all he sat reading the letters which Lucrezia, his wife,
sent him to Paris. "You called me and I came home to your heart." It
is her face which we see everywhere in Andrea's Madonnas, and if at
any time he took his model from any other face, there was always a
resemblance to hers in the painting--

    You smile? why, there's my picture ready made!

But Lucrezia served as his model, not his ideal. She had been married
before to a hatter, but was remarkable, says Vasari, who worked in
Andrea's studio and had a grudge against her, "as much for pride and
haughtiness, as for beauty and fascination."[167] And

                    Had the mouth there urged
    "God and the glory! never care for gain....
    "Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo!
    "Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!"
    I might have done it for you. So it seems.

It is in some such mood of communing with himself that we seem here to
see the painter; yet there is a certain undercurrent of contentment
below the look of melancholy. "The force of a beautiful face carries me
to heaven": so sang Michael Angelo. Lucrezia dragged her husband down;
his rivals overcame him--

    Because there's still Lucrezia,--_as I choose_.


691. "ECCE HOMO!"

  _Ascribed to Lo Spagna_ (Umbrian: painted 1503-1530).
  _See 1032._


602. ST. HUGO OF GRENOBLE.

  _Lodovico of Parma_ (Parmese: early 16th century).

      Said to have been a scholar of Francia.

The crozier shows him to be a bishop, and it is inscribed S. VGO. This
is St. Hugo (died 1132), who was Bishop of Grenoble when St. Bruno
founded the Chartreuse, and who often resided amongst the Carthusians.
Doubtless he was not an unwelcome visitor, for he had the power, it
is said, of converting fowls into fish, which it was lawful to eat.
For forty years, it is further told of him, he had haunting doubts on
the old, old question of the origin of evil. The good bishop referred
them at last to Pope Gregory VII., who greatly comforted St. Hugo by
assuring him that such doubts were only sent to try his virtue and
faith in the providence of God in permitting evil in the world.


693. ST. CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA.

  _Pinturicchio_ (Umbrian: 1454-1513).

      Bernardino di Betto, or the son of Benedetto, was commonly
      called Pinturicchio, "the little painter." He is not strongly
      represented in our Gallery. His principal works are the
      decorated ceiling and frescoes in the Library of Siena, which
      represent the life of the Pope Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius
      II.). A drawing of this Library and copies of some of the
      frescoes are in the Arundel Society's Collection. Pinturicchio,
      says Symonds, is "a kind of Umbrian Gozzoli, who brings us
      here and there in close relation to the men of his own time.
      His wall-paintings in the library of the Cathedral of Siena
      are so well preserved that we need not seek elsewhere for
      better specimens of the decorative art most highly prized in
      the first years of the 16th century. These frescoes have a
      richness of effect and a vivacity of natural action which, in
      spite of their superficiality, render them highly charming.
      The life of Pius II. is treated like a legend. Both Pope and
      Emperor are romantically conceived, and each portion of the
      tale is told as though it were a part in some popular ballad.
      So much remains of Perugian affectation as gives a kind of
      childlike grace to the studied attitudes and many-coloured
      groups of elegant young men" (_Renaissance_, iii. 220). In
      the foreground of one of the frescoes is a charming figure,
      supposed to be a portrait of the young Raphael. Vasari states
      and subsequent writers have repeated that Pinturicchio was
      assisted in these frescoes by Raphael. This supposition rests
      on three drawings attributed to Raphael, but now proved to be
      by Pinturicchio, who bound himself to execute the whole work
      with his own hand. Morelli's attribution to Pinturicchio of
      the so-called "Raphael's sketch-book" at Venice is one of the
      most important of that critic's discoveries. "If (says Morelli)
      in representing serious religious subjects, he does not come
      up to Perugino as regards proportion, finish, and the filling
      of space; if his forms are not so noble, and the expression
      of religious sentiment not so deep as in Pietro; yet, on the
      other hand, Pinturicchio is, to my mind, less conscious, more
      fresh and racy than Perugino, and does not so often fatigue us
      by monotony and that conventional sweetness which, especially
      in the productions of his last twenty years, makes Pietro
      positively wearisome. And, as an imaginative landscape-painter,
      Pinturicchio surpasses almost all of his contemporaries"
      (_German Galleries_, p. 285). Pinturicchio's frescoes at Siena
      occupied him from 1502 to 1509. He probably studied first under
      Fiorenzo di Lorenzo (No. 1103); afterwards he entered into
      partnership with Pietro Perugino. He went to Rome in 1479 and
      was honoured by commissions from cardinals and popes. Among
      his works in Rome are frescoes representing the stories of
      the Virgin and St. Jerome in S. Maria del Popolo; frescoes in
      the Appartamenti Borgia in the Vatican, and frescoes of S.
      Bernardino of Siena in the Bufalini Chapel, S. Maria Aracoeli.
      Morelli attributes to him also two of the frescoes in the
      Sixtine Chapel (the Baptism of Christ and the History of
      Moses). In 1500 he commenced the beautiful series of frescoes,
      now much disfigured, in the collegiate church at Spello (see
      Arundel Society's copies). That he was held in high esteem by
      his fellow-citizens is shown by his having been elected in
      1501 Decemvir of Perugia in place of Pietro Perugino. Unlike
      Perugino, he never mastered the use of oil, but painted in
      tempera. Vasari, who did not like Pinturicchio, describes him
      as somewhat of a hack, and still more of a lover of money.
      "Among other qualities he possessed that of giving considerable
      satisfaction to princes and nobles because he quickly brought
      the works commanded by them to an end." As for his love of
      money, he died of vexation, Vasari assures us, "because a
      certain trunk which he had insisted on being removed from his
      painting-room in Siena was afterwards found to be full of gold
      pieces." According, however, to a contemporary writer, his wife
      left him alone in his house when ill, and he was starved to
      death.

St. Catherine of Alexandria was of all the female saints next to
Mary Magdalene the most popular: she meets us in nearly every room
in the National Gallery, and even in London, churches and districts
once placed under her protection still retain her name. Her general
attributes are a book, a sword, and a wheel. The meaning of these
will be seen from the legend of her which crusaders brought from the
East. She was the daughter of a queen, and of marvellous wisdom and
understanding. And when the time came that she should govern her
people, she, shunning responsibility and preferring wisdom before
sovereignty, shut herself up in her palace and gave her mind to
the study of philosophy. For this wilful seclusiveness her people
wished her to marry a husband who should at once fulfil the duties of
government and lead them forth to battle. But she, to prevent this
repugnant union, made one more spiritual by her mystical marriage with
Christ. And for this and other unworldly persistencies, the heathen
tyrant Maximin would have broken her on a wheel, but that "fire came
down from heaven, sent by the destroying angel of God, and broke the
wheel in pieces." Yet for all this the tyrant repented not, and after
scourging St. Catherine with rods beheaded her with the sword, and so
having won the martyr's palm, she entered into the joy of her Lord.


694. ST. JEROME IN HIS STUDY.

  _School of Giovanni Bellini._[168] _See under 189._

Besides translating the Bible, St. Jerome (see 227) is famous as one of
the founders of the monastic system, "of the ordered cell and tended
garden where before was but the desert and the wild wood," and he
died in the monastery he had founded at Bethlehem. This picture shows
us the inside of monastic life. St. Jerome, with the scholar's look
of quiet satisfaction, is deep in study; his room has no luxury, but
is beautiful in its grace and order; the lion, who seems here to be
sharing his master's meditation, and the partridge peering into the
saint's slippers, speak of the love of the old monks for the lower
animals; and the beautiful landscape seen through the open window
recalls the sweet nooks which they everywhere chose and tended for
their dwelling. The effect of the whole picture is to suggest the
peaceful simplicity of the old religious life in contrast to the
"getting and spending" with which we now "lay waste our powers."

The picture belongs to what Ruskin has called the "Time of the
Masters," who desire only to make everything dainty and delightful.
"Everything in it is exquisite, complete, and pure; there is not a
particle of dust in the cupboards, nor a cloud in the air; the wooden
shutters are dainty, the candlestick is dainty, the saint's blue hat
is dainty, and its violet tassel, and its ribbon, and his blue cloak,
and his spare pair of shoes, and his little brown partridge--it is all
a perfect quintessence of innocent luxury--absolute delight, without
one drawback in it, nor taint of the Devil anywhere" (_Verona and other
Lectures_, § 26). For another specimen of this "pictorial perfectness
and deliciousness," see 288 (especially the compartment with Raphael
and Tobit).

As for the partridge, this is frequently introduced into sacred
pictures, especially those of the Venetian School. There is a pretty
legend of St. John which perhaps accounts for it, and which makes
its introduction very appropriate in the picture of a recluse. St.
John had, it is said, a tame partridge, which he cherished much, and
amused himself with feeding and tending. A certain huntsman, passing
by with his bow and arrows, was astonished to see the great apostle,
so venerable for his age and sanctity, engaged in such an amusement.
The apostle asked him if he always kept his bow bent. He answered that
would be the way to render it useless. "If," replied St. John, "you
unbend your bow to prevent its being useless, so do I thus unbend my
mind for the same reason" (Mrs. Jameson: _Sacred and Legendary Art_, p.
100).


695. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Andrea Previtali_ (Bergamese: about 1480-1528).

      This painter (whose personality is in some art-histories merged
      in that of Cordelle Agii, see 1409) was one of Bellini's
      numerous pupils--a provincial from Bergamo, "a dry, honest,
      monotonous" painter (see Morelli's _German Galleries_, pp.
      178-181, and under 1203). "As regards technique, Previtali
      is certainly very eminent; in brilliance of colouring he is
      not behind any of Bellini's pupils, and the landscapes in
      the background of his pictures are for the most part neatly
      and faultlessly executed. But he lacks the main attributes
      of a great artist--invention and the power of original
      representation." Whilst painting in Venice, he signed his
      pictures _Andreas Bergomensis_; on his return to Bergamo,
      _Andreas Previtalus_. His pictures at Bergamo are numerous; the
      best is the altar-piece in S. Spirito.

A characteristic example of the painter. The figure of the monk in
adoration is somewhat hard. The landscape background is pleasant.


696. MARCO BARBARIGO.

  _Unknown_ (Flemish: 15th century).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

He was Venetian Consul in London in 1449, and holds in his hand a
letter addressed to him there. He was subsequently elected Doge, but
died (in 1486), after holding the office for six months. It is recorded
of him as Doge that he was a specially mild-tempered and good man--a
character which is not belied in this portrait of him in his earlier
days. This portrait was formerly ascribed to Gerard van der Meire (see
under 1078). It is now by some attributed to Petrus Cristus.


697. PORTRAIT OF A TAILOR.

  _Moroni_ (Bergamese: 1525-1578).

      Giambattista Moroni is one of the greatest of the Italian
      portrait-painters, and this picture is perhaps his best-known
      and most popular production.[169] The works of Moroni appeal
      alike to the general public and to the painter. He gave to
      his figures a vitality and ease, and impressed upon them a
      verisimilitude which appeal to every spectator. His works (adds
      Sir F. Burton) "will always be highly estimated by the painter,
      as they exhibit rare technical merits, perfect knowledge and
      command of means, facility of execution without display of
      dexterity, truth of colour, and the finest perception of the
      value of tones." "No portrait-painter ever placed the epidermis
      of the human face upon canvas with more fidelity, and with
      greater truth than Moroni: his portraits have all a more or
      less prosaic look, but they must all have had that startling
      likeness to the original which so enchants the great public,
      who exclaim 'The very man! just how he looks!' And it was
      with the eyes of the great public that Moroni did look at his
      subjects; he was not a poet in the true sense of the word,
      but a consummate painter. Yet, now and then, he manages to
      go beyond himself, and to pierce the surface till he reaches
      the soul of the sitter. In such cases his portraits may rank
      with those of Titian" (Morelli's _German Galleries_, p. 48).
      His colouring varied at different periods of his life. For
      examples of his manner before he came under Il Moretto's
      influence see 1023 and 1316--the reddish hue of his flesh-tints
      being characteristic. In his second period he adopted the
      "silvery" manner of Il Moretto: seen here and in 1022; whilst
      for his third, or naturalistic manner see 742. Moroni is a
      distinguished ornament of the school of Bergamo--a provincial
      school characterised, says Morelli, by "manly energy," but
      also by "a certain prosaic want of refinement." See, for
      other Bergamese painters, Previtali (695) and Cariani (1203).
      Palma Vecchio, the greatest of them, is represented by the
      "Portrait of Ariosto," 636. Giambattista Moroni was a painter
      without honour in his own country, and when people from Bergamo
      came to Titian to be painted, he used to refer them to their
      own countryman--no better face painter, he would tell them,
      existed. Moroni is believed to have entered the studio of
      Moretto at Brescia when fifteen years of age. His religious
      pictures are inferior reflections of his master's. Upon one
      of them, still preserved in the church of Gorlago (between
      Bergamo and Brescia) he was engaged at the time of his death.
      No admirer of Moroni should omit to visit Bergamo: a splendid
      series of his portraits is to be seen in the Carrara gallery
      of that town. There too, as also in the gallery at Verona, is
      a pretty portrait by him of a little girl.

A "speaking portrait." "The tailor's picture is so well done," says an
old Italian critic, "that it speaks better than an advocate could." A
portrait that enables one, moreover, to realise what was once meant
by a "worshipful company of merchant tailors." Tagliapanni--for such
is his name--is no Alton Locke--- no discontented "tailor and poet";
neither is he like some fashionable West-End tailor, with ambitions of
rising above his work. He is well-to-do--notice his handsome ring; but
he has the shears in his hands. He does the work himself, and he likes
the work. He is something of an artist, it would seem, in clothes: his
jacket and handsome breeches were a piece of his work, one may suppose;
and the artist has caught and immortalised him, as he is standing back
for a minute to calculate the effect of his next cut.


698. THE DEATH OF PROCRIS.

  _Piero di Cosimo_ (Florentine: 1462-1521).

      A very characteristic work, and the most interesting of those
      extant, by Piero, called di Cosimo, after his godfather and
      master, Cosimo Rosselli. Piero's peculiarities are well known
      to all readers of George Eliot's _Romola_, where everything
      told us about him by Vasari in one of his most amusing chapters
      is carefully worked up. The first impression left by this
      picture--its quaintness--is precisely typical of the man. He
      shut himself off from the world and stopped his ears; lived in
      the untidiest of rooms, and would not have his garden tended,
      "preferring to see all things wild and savage about him." He
      took his meals at times and in ways that no other man did, and
      Romola used to coax him with sweets and hard-boiled eggs. His
      fondness for quaint landscape ("he would sometimes stand beside
      a wall," says Vasari, "and image forth the most extraordinary
      landscapes that ever were") may be seen in this picture; so
      also may his love of animals, in which, says Vasari, he took
      "indescribable pleasure." Piero accompanied his master, Cosimo
      Rosselli, to Rome in 1480, and painted the landscape to that
      master's "Sermon on the Mount" in the Sixtine Chapel. He
      painted several altar-pieces, but his true bent was towards
      mythological subjects and quaintly decorative treatment.
      Vasari describes in detail a Carnival triumph devised by Piero.
      This and the adornment of dwelling-rooms and marriage-chests
      were the forms in which his fantastic originality found the
      most congenial expression. He was also a good portrait-painter:
      No. 895 in this gallery has recently been recognised as his
      work.

The subjects of Piero's pictures were generally mythological. In
_Romola_ he paints Tito and Romola as Bacchus and Ariadne; here he
shows the death of Procris, the story in which the ancients embodied
the folly of jealousy. For Procris being told that Cephalus was
unfaithful, straightway believed the report and secretly followed him
to the woods, for he was a great hunter. And Cephalus called upon
"aura," the Latin for breeze, for Cephalus was hot after the chase:
"Sweet air, O come," and echo answered, "Come, sweet air." But Procris,
thinking that he was calling after his mistress, turned to see, and as
she moved she made a rustling in the leaves, which Cephalus mistook for
the motion of some beast of the forest, and let fly his unerring dart,
which Procris once had given him.

      But Procris lay among the white wind-flowers,
      Shot in the throat. From out the little wound
      The slow blood drained, as drops in autumn showers
      Drip from the leaves upon the sodden ground.
      None saw her die but Lelaps, the swift hound,
      That watched her dumbly with a wistful fear,
      Till at the dawn, the hornèd wood-men found
      And bore her gently on a sylvan bier,
    To lie beside the sea,--with many an uncouth tear.

Piero's treatment of the theme is, it should be noted, romantic, rather
than classical; in which respect his picture is characteristic of
the earlier Renaissance. "In creating his Satyr the painter has not
had recourse to any antique bas-relief, but has imagined for himself
a being half human, half bestial, and yet wholly real; nor has he
portrayed in Procris a nymph of Greek form, but a girl of Florence.
The strange animals and gaudy flowers introduced into the landscape
background further remove the subject from the sphere of classic
treatment. Florentine realism and quaint fancy being thus curiously
blended, the artistic result may be profitably studied for the light it
throws upon the so-called Paganism of the earlier Renaissance. Fancy at
that moment was more free than when superior knowledge of antiquity
had created a demand for reproductive art, and when the painters
thought less of the meaning of the fable for themselves than of its
capability of being used as a machine for the display of erudition"
(Symonds's _Renaissance_, iii. 187). Piero seems to have taken his
background from Lake Thrasymene.

Piero's poetic fancy in this picture has aroused a responsive echo in
the poets of our own day. The lines quoted above are from "The Death of
Procris; a version suggested by the so-named picture of Piero di Cosimo
in the National Gallery," in Mr. Austin Dobson's _Old World Idylls_.
Another version of the picture may be found in Michael Field's _Sight
and Song_:--

    And there she lies half-veiled, half-bare,
    Deep in the midst of nature that abides
    Inapprehensive she is lying there,
        So wan;
    The flowers, the silver estuary afar--
    These daisies, plantains, all the white and red
    Field-blossoms through the leaves and grasses spread;
    The water with its pelican,
    Its flight of sails and its blue countrysides--
    Unto themselves they are;
        The dogs sport on the sand,
    The herons curve about the reeds
    Or one by one descend the air,
        While lifelessly she bleeds
        From throat and dabbled hand.

Mr. Ruskin also has written a piece around our picture, which he reads
with a different eye from "Michael Field,"[170] seeing in it not so
much the inapprehensiveness of nature as the pathetic fallacy whereby
the moods of nature are made to sympathise with human joy or sorrow:--

      "The next best landscape (to Bellini's 'Peter Martyr') in
      the National Gallery is a Florentine one on the edge of
      transition to the Greek feeling; and in that the distance
      is still beautiful, but misty, not clear; the flowers are
      still beautiful, but, intentionally, of the colour of blood;
      and in the foreground lies the dead body of Procris, which
      disturbs the poor painter greatly; and he has expressed his
      disturbed mind about it in the figure of a poor little brown
      (nearly black) Faun, or perhaps the god Faunus himself, who
      is much puzzled by the death of Procris, and stoops over
      her, thinking it a woful thing to find her pretty body lying
      there breathless, and all spotted with blood on the breast"
      (_Lectures on Landscape_, § 94).


699. AGOSTINO AND NICCOLO DELLA TORRE.

  _Lorenzo Lotto_ (Venetian: 1480-1555).

      To this great painter full justice has scarcely been done by
      writers on art--an omission which in recent years Morelli and
      still more Mr. Berenson, in his elaborate monograph, have
      sought to repair. Lotto led a wandering life, which took him
      much away from Venice; hence his pictures are comparatively
      little known. Again, as Sir F. Burton points out, "great
      versatility and remarkable impressibility are among the chief
      characteristics of Lotto, who certainly was possessed of genius
      but whose development was oscillating and affected by many
      influences. Only by extremely careful study and comparison can
      his hand be traced throughout in works, which at first sight
      exhibit little or nothing in common. Were none of Lotto's works
      signed or otherwise attested they would certainly bear very
      various attributions, as indeed many of his unsigned pictures
      have done, and as it is likely some do still." The portrait,
      for instance, of Andrea Odoni at Hampton Court was for several
      centuries attributed to Correggio, but recent cleaning has
      uncovered Lotto's signature and the date 1527. Of his power as
      a portrait-painter visitors to the National Gallery can form a
      good idea. His works in this sort will bear comparison with the
      best of his contemporaries. They have, says Morelli, "all that
      refined, inward elegance of feeling which marks the culminating
      point in the last stage of progressive art in Italy, and
      which is principally represented by Leonardo da Vinci, Lotto,
      Andrea del Sarto, and Correggio; whereas the elegance of
      Bronzino in Tuscany, and of Parmigiano in North Italy, is an
      outward affected one, which has nothing to do with the inner
      life of the person represented, and therefore characterises
      the first stage of declining art." His sympathetic nature
      enabled him to seize the finer traits of his sitters, and
      they in turn "look out from his canvasses as if begging for
      the sympathy" of the spectator. No. 1047 in our Gallery is
      especially characteristic. Lotto's altar-pieces, which were
      numerous, must be studied at Treviso, Recanati, Jesi, Bergamo,
      and Trescorre (frescoes), near the latter place. His pictures
      at different periods (they are for the most part dated) show
      strong resemblances to different painters--to Bellini and the
      Vivarini, to Palma, to Titian, to Giorgione, and to Correggio.
      He was born at Venice, and, according to Vasari, was a disciple
      of John Bellini. Mr. Berenson, on the contrary, maintains
      on internal evidence that Lotto must have belonged to the
      rival school of Alvise Vivarini. Of Palma, he was, according
      to Vasari, the friend and companion. With Titian he was on
      friendly terms, though if we may judge from a letter by Pietro
      Aretino, the attitude of the worldly Titian coterie to the
      gentle Lotto, was not unmixed with some contempt. "O Lotto," he
      writes, "as goodness good, and as talent talented, Titian from
      Augsburg, in the midst of the high favour everybody is eager to
      show him, greets and embraces you by the token of the letter
      which I received from him two days ago. He says that it would
      double the pleasure that he takes in the emperor's satisfaction
      with the picture he is now painting, if he had your eye and
      your judgment to approve him. And indeed, the painter is
      not mistaken, for your judgment has been formed by age, by
      nature, and by art, with the prompting of that straightforward
      kindliness which pronounces upon the works of others exactly
      as if they were your own. Envy is not in your breast. Rather
      do you delight to see in other artists certain qualities which
      you do not find in your own brush, although it performs those
      miracles which do not come easy to many who yet feel very happy
      over their technical skill. But holding the second place in
      the art of painting is nothing compared to holding the first
      place in the duties of religion, for Heaven will recompense you
      with a glory that passes the praise of this world.--Venice,
      April 1548." The resemblance between Lotto and Correggio was
      founded on no personal intercourse or artistic "influence," but
      on similarity of temperament. It is most conspicuous in the
      works of Lotto's "Bergamask period" (1518-1526). But whereas
      Correggio's sensitiveness is to impressions of outward joy
      and beauty, Lotto's is attuned rather to states of the human
      soul. Titian's sitters, it has been well said, are as if on
      parade, and his religious pictures tell of the pomp or rapture
      of public services. Lotto's sitters commune rather with their
      own souls, and in his devotional pieces he aims at a personal
      interpretation of religious motives. "As a colourist," says
      Burton, "Lotto remained throughout a Venetian. His flesh tints
      are true, and various as the age, sex, and temperament of the
      persons depicted." All that we know of his life suggests a
      reserved, sensitive, and unworldly nature. Unlike so many of
      his contemporaries, he never sued the favour of the mighty.
      In his account book recently discovered at Loreto he speaks
      again and again of having done excellent work for people who
      remunerated him with pence where if a contract had been made
      they would have had to pay him in pounds. He lodged sometimes
      with friends, sometimes with monks. His life was that of a
      lonely wanderer, very industrious, but laying up no store. In
      1554 he made over himself and all his belongings to the Holy
      House at Loreto, "being tired of wandering and wishing to end
      his days in that holy place." During the last years of his life
      he had almost entirely lost his voice. In one of his wills is
      a reference which shows us the temperament of the man. Among
      his scanty possessions were a number of antique gems. These
      he speaks of lovingly, because they were engraved with mystic
      symbols for the spirit to brood upon (see _Lorenzo Lotto: an
      Essay in Constructive Criticism_, by Bernhard Berenson, 1895;
      and Morelli's _German Galleries_, pp. 31-40; _Roman Galleries_,
      p. 301).

Agostino was Professor of Medicine in the University of Padua; he
holds a copy of "Galen," the most celebrated of the ancient medical
writers, in his hand. It was for Niccolo, however, according to the
inscription, that the picture was painted in 1515; and Signor Morelli
(its former owner) thinks that Agostino's portrait must have been
inserted at a later time, for "it is placed very awkwardly in the
background" (_German Galleries_, p. 37 _n._). "No one with a feeling
for composition can doubt for an instant that Agostino was originally
intended to be alone on the canvas, as he occupies all of it that a
single bust ought to occupy. Morelli's inference seems thus to be well
founded that Lotto, on his return from Venice to Bergamo, stopped at
Padua and painted the portrait of Agostino, which he brought to Niccolo
at Bergamo, who thereupon had his own portrait added.... Lotto's
sitters were in no way remarkable. Nevertheless, he gives them a look
of refinement and innate sweetness of nature which brings us very close
to them" (Berenson, pp. 138, 321).


700. THE HOLY FAMILY.

  _Bernardino Lanini_ (Lombard: about 1508-1578).

      Lanini was a native of Vercelli, and a scholar of Gaudenzio
      Ferrari. Subsequently he approached more to the manner of
      Leonardo, as in this picture dated 1543. His works are frequent
      at Turin and Vercelli. There is an altar-piece by him at Borgo
      Sesia, near Varallo; his principal works are frescoes in the
      Cathedral at Novara.

Mr. Pater bids us notice in this picture the "pensive, tarnished silver
sidelights, like mere reflections of natural sunshine" ("Art Notes in
North Italy," _New Review_, Nov. 1890).


701. THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.

  _Justus of Padua_ (died 1400).

      A picture of interest as being the oldest by any North Italian
      painter in the Gallery--the date inscribed on the plinth below
      is 1367. Justus (Giusto di Giovanni) was a native of Florence,
      who in 1375 settled in Padua and founded his style upon the
      works of Giotto in that town. The frescoes at Padua formerly
      ascribed to him are now said to be the works of his scholars,
      Giovanni and Antonio da Padova.

None of the pictures in our Gallery by followers of Giotto is so
satisfactory as this; "exquisite both in design and colour, though on
a very small scale, it has," says Sir E. Poynter, "all the largeness
of style which characterises the great Florentine fourteenth-century
frescoes" (_The National Gallery_, i. 258). "The Virgin is of a fresh
type, pretty and noble also. Amongst the saints in the centre picture
that of St. Paul (on the extreme right) is distinguished by its natural
bearing. There is, however, vigour and a sense of beauty and proportion
throughout this charming little work." In the panel to the left, with
the Nativity, "may be noticed the spirit of alertness in the attendant
waiting to wash the child, and the statuesque design of St. Joseph";
in that to the right, with the crucifixion, "the figure of St. John,
at the foot of the Cross, with its fine expression of grief, and
beautifully-designed drapery" (Monkhouse, _Italian Pre-Raphaelites_,
p. 23). Above is the Annunciation, with regard to which see notes on
No. 1139. On the reverse side of the wings are other incidents from the
life of the Virgin.

This and the pictures following (701-722) were presented by Queen
Victoria to the National Gallery "in fulfilment of the wishes of
H.R.H. the Prince Consort." They formerly belonged to the collection
of H.I.H. Prince Louis of Oettingen-Wallerstein, and afterwards
became the property of Prince Albert. It was his intention from
the first to present them to the nation, but the gift was delayed
owing to the uncertainty with regard to the site of the proposed new
National Gallery. The Prince's purpose remained unaccomplished, but
not forgotten, at his death, and in 1863 the best pictures from the
collection were presented by Queen Victoria to the nation.


702. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Unknown_ (Umbrian: 15th-16th century).

Formerly ascribed to _L'Ingegno_. _See 1220._


703. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Pinturicchio_ (Umbrian: 1454-1513). _See 693._


704. COSIMO, DUKE OF TUSCANY.

  _Angelo Bronzino_ (Florentine: 1502-1572). _See 649._
  _See also_ (p. xx)

A contemporary portrait of the great Medici, the first "Grand Duke"
of Tuscany (ruled 1537-1564), who was regarded in his day as the very
incarnation of Machiavelli's _Prince_, "inasmuch as he joined daring
to talent and prudence," and though "he could practise mercy in due
season," was yet "capable of great cruelty." No one, who notices here
that large protruding under lip of his, will doubt this last element in
his character.


705. STS. MATTHEW, CATHERINE, AND JOHN.

  _Ascribed to Stephan Lochner_ (Early German: died 1451).

      "Meister Stephan" was a native of Constance, who settled in
      Cologne, and whose work has the stamp of the early Cologne
      School (see 687). His chief work is the so-called Dombild, now
      in Cologne Cathedral: "Item. I gave two white pennies," says
      Albert Dürer in his diary, "to see the picture that Master
      Staffan of Cologne painted." This famous altar-piece has been
      published by the Arundel Society. "Italian Art," says Sir F.
      Burton, "has seldom produced a group so beautiful as that of
      the crowned Madonna in its central panel." Another exquisite
      little picture ascribed to Meister Stephan is in the Cologne
      Museum.

Three figures full of innocent fervour and graceful sentimentality.
St. Matthew as an evangelist holds a book and a pen, and is attended
by the symbolic angel. St. John is attended by the eagle, which is the
constant symbol of this evangelist, because he soared upwards to the
contemplation of the divine nature of the Saviour.


706. PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE.

  _The Master of the Lyversberg Passion_ (German:
  died about 1490).

      A picture by the unknown painter of a series of Passion
      pictures, formerly belonging to Herr Lyversberg of Cologne,
      but now in the Museum of the city. He painted also a series
      of eight subjects from the Life of Mary. Of these six are in
      the Pinacothek at Munich, a seventh is in the German Museum at
      Nuremberg, and our picture is the eighth.

Characteristic of the German School after the Flemish influence. The
sky background is gilt as in the old German pictures, but the types of
the figures are Flemish. Notice the quaint pointed shoes, and the touch
of realism in making the foot of Simeon, as he advances to receive the
child from its mother, come half out of his slipper.


707. ST. PETER AND ST. DOROTHY.

  _Master of the Cologne Crucifixion_ (Early German School: early 16th
    century).

Part of an altar-piece, the rest of which is in the Munich Gallery, by
an artist whose name is unknown, and who is therefore called after his
principal works (now in the Cologne Museum). It has been well said of
him that "he succeeded in giving an intense expression of transient
emotion to the faces; but by endeavouring to lend a sympathetic action
to the whole figure, he has exaggerated the action into distortion"
(_History of Painting_, from the German of Woltmann and Woermann,
ii. 224). This is conspicuously the case here. Look, for instance,
at the comic contrast between St. Peter's big foot and St. Dorothy's
pointed little shoe--between what is almost a leer on his face and the
"mincing" affectation on hers. St. Peter is distinguished of course
by the keys; St. Dorothy by the basket of flowers--the flowers which
she sent to Theophilus in token of the truth of the faith in which she
died: "Carry these to Theophilus, say that Dorothea has sent them,
and that I go before him to the garden whence they came and await him
there" (see Mrs. Jameson; _Sacred and Legendary Art_, p. 336, ed.
1850).


708. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Unknown_[171] (Early Flemish: 15th century).

The Madonna offers Christ an apple--symbol of the forbidden fruit, and
thus of the sin in the world which he came to remove.


709. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Unknown_ (Flemish School; 15th-16th century).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

"In Flemish pictures the varnish was incorporated with the surface
colours, and cannot be removed without destroying at the same time
the very fabric of the work. For this reason all attempts to, what is
called, _restore_, or clean pictures of the Flemish School, result only
in the destruction of the work, and by this means many fine pictures
have, for all practical purposes, perished.... (This picture) is a
lamentable example" (Conway's _Early Flemish Artists_, p. 119).


710. PORTRAIT OF A MONK.

  _Unknown_[172] (Early Flemish: 15th century).


711. "MATER DOLOROSA."


712. "ECCE HOMO!"

  _Roger van der Weyden_ (Flemish: 1400-1464). _See 664._

"It was a common custom with Roger's followers to copy single heads
out of their master's large groups. Such single heads always have gold
backgrounds, usually dotted over with little black dashes" (Conway's
_Early Flemish Artists_, p. 275). These companion panels are perhaps
instances, and the heads selected for reproduction are typical of the
overstrained pathos of this school. Notice how prominently the tears in
the sorrowing mother, and the blood and tears in the "Ecco Homo" are
made to stand out.


713. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Jan Mostaert_ (Early Dutch: 1474-1555).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

      Mostaert, a native of Haarlem, was for eighteen years painter
      to Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands. A picture
      ascribed to him is preserved in the church of Notre Dame at
      Bruges, but no known pictures bear his signature. A large
      number of his works perished in the great fire at Haarlem in
      1571.

One of the few specimens in the Gallery of the first period of Dutch
art, when it was still following the traditions of the Early Flemish
School.


714. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Cornelis Engelbertsz_ (Dutch: 1468-1533).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

      Engelbertsz was one of the earliest oil painters at Leyden,
      and is said to have been the master of Lucas of Leyden. Most
      of his important religious works were destroyed by the Dutch
      iconoclasts of the sixteenth century.


715. THE CRUCIFIXION.

  _Joachim Patinir_ (Early Flemish: died 1524).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

      Patinir (born at Dinant, but settled in Antwerp) was styled
      by Albert Dürer, who stayed with him when in Antwerp, drew
      his portrait and attended his wedding, "Joachim the good
      landscape painter." What distinguishes his landscape is its
      greater expanse, as compared with earlier works. The Flemish
      painters preceding him were mostly content with the narrow
      domestic scenery of their own Maas country. But Patinir's
      pictures "embrace miles of country, and open on every side....
      Some far-away cottage by the river-side, some hamlet nestling
      against a remote hill-slope, some castle on a craggy peak,
      blue against the transparent sky--such objects were a joy to
      him.... Moreover, with Patinir the fantastic element was of
      much importance. He wished his landscapes to be romantic.... He
      would have precipitous rocks.... His river must pass through
      gorges or under natural archways; his skies must be full of
      moving clouds; his wide districts of country must present
      contrasts of rocky mountain, water, and fertile plains.... He
      saw also the grandeur of wild scenery, and strove, though not
      with perfect success, to bring that into his pictures, showing
      thereby the possession of a foretaste of that delight in nature
      for her own sake, the full enjoyment of which has been reserved
      for the people of our own century" (Conway's _Early Flemish
      Artists_, pp. 299, 300). "His figures," says Sir F. Burton,
      "while retaining old Netherlandish characteristics, are
      good, expressive, and even noble in conception." Most of the
      Galleries contain pictures by Patinir. Madrid is particularly
      rich in them.

"A high authority on early Flemish art, M. Henri Hymans, has stated
that the figures in the 'Crucifixion' given to Joachim Patinir, and of
which the landscape is undoubtedly his, are by the painter's friend,
Quentin Matsys. Unquestionably these figures differ much in colour and
execution from those contained in such other examples of Patinir in the
National Gallery as the 'Nun' (945), or 'The Visit of the Virgin to St.
Elizabeth' (1082)" (Claude Phillips in the _Academy_, September 28,
1889).


716. ST. CHRISTOPHER.

  _Joachim Patinir_ (Early Flemish: died 1524). _See 715._

One of the earliest attempts in painting to tell the beautiful legend
of Christopher (the Christ bearer), the hermit ferryman, who, "having
sustained others in their chief earthly trials, afterwards had Christ
for companion of his own." The best account of the legend of St.
Christopher is to be found in Miss Alexander's _Roadside Songs of
Tuscany_, edited by Ruskin, illustrated with "the most beautiful and
true designs that have ever yet been made out of all the multitude by
which alike the best spiritual and worldly power of Art have commended
to Christendom its noblest monastic legend."


717. ST. JOHN ON THE ISLAND OF PATMOS.

  _Joachim Patinir_ (Early Flemish: died 1524). _See 715._

The evangelist on the island of Patmos, writing the revelations out
of an ink-horn held by an eagle, which an imp is attempting to steal.
In the sky above are the revelations themselves: "And there appeared
a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon
under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.... And there
appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon,
having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads"
(Revelation xii. 1, 3).


718. CHRIST ON THE CROSS.

  _Ascribed to Hendrik Bles_ (Flemish: about 1480-1550).

      Bles, called by the Italians "Civetta" (the owl), on account of
      the owl which he often adopted as his monogram, was an imitator
      of Patinir (see 715). Van Mander says that his nickname was Met
      de Bles (with the forelock), but as he signs himself Henricus
      Blessius, it is probable that Bles was his real name.


719. THE READING MAGDALEN.

  _Ascribed to Hendrik Bles_ (_See last picture_).

For the subject see No. 654.


720. A "REPOSE" (see No. 160).


721. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Jan van Schorel_ (Dutch: 1495-1562).

      Schorel, so called from his birthplace, belongs to the second
      period of Dutch art, and was one of the most successful of the
      "Italianisers"; but neither of these pictures is a good or
      indeed a certain specimen. He was a poet and musician as well
      as a painter, and studied under Albert Dürer at Nuremberg.
      He afterwards visited Venice, whence he went to Jerusalem,
      returning by Rhodes to Rome. In 1522 he was made by his
      countryman, Pope Adrian VI., Keeper of the Art Collection of
      the Vatican. He afterwards returned to Utrecht, where he died
      a Canon of St. Mary's. He was the master of Anthony Mor.


722. A LADY'S PORTRAIT.

  _Unknown_ (German: 15th-16th century).

Formerly ascribed to Sigmund Holbein (1465-1540). A German
housewife--with a characteristic mixture about her of sentimentality
(for she holds a forget-me-not in her hand) and of austerity (for there
is something forbidding, surely, in these terribly angular fingers of
hers).


724. "OUR LADY OF THE SWALLOW."

  _Carlo Crivelli_ (Venetian: painted 1468-1493). _See 602._

Full of the dainty detail which characterises the Venetian pictures
of this time. Notice the fruit placed everywhere about the Virgin's
throne; and above, the vases of flowers and the swallow--hence the name
of the picture, "Madonna della Rondine." Notice also the beautiful
dress patterns and the rich hanging brocades. The Virgin's dress is
a lovely silk brocade, of a design which might well be copied for
muslins and curtains. In this picture, however, "Crivelli's gift
of characterisation has been overpowered by his interest in the
accessories. St. Jerome, indeed, is a noble and dignified figure, but
who could believe in the St. Sebastian? As a study of costume the
figure is interesting, reproducing every detail with minute fidelity,
and bringing before us the model of a well-dressed young man of
Crivelli's time. But the features are of an ignoble type, and the
attitude is suggestive only of self-conscious vanity. Instead of a
devout attendant at the throne, we seem to get a dandy posing for the
admiration of the spectator." The scenes of the predella, on the other
hand, are full of animation, of feeling, and of force (Rushforth's
_Crivelli_, p. 72). The picture is signed by Carolus Crivellus _Miles_,
so that it is one of his later works. In the centre of the step is the
escutcheon of the Odoni family, for whose chapel in the church of the
Franciscans at Matelica the picture was painted.


726. CHRIST'S AGONY IN THE GARDEN.

  _Giovanni Bellini_ (Venetian: 1426-1516). _See 189._

An early work of the master, painted probably about 1459 (nearly half
a century earlier than the Doge's portrait, 189), but interesting as
showing the advance made by him in landscape. "We see for the first
time an attempt to render a particular effect of light, the first
twilight picture with clouds rosy with the lingering gleams of sunset,
and light shining from the sky on hill and town--the first in which
a head is seen in shadow against a brilliant sky" (Monkhouse: _The
Italian Pre-Raphaelites_, p. 73). "In the figures of the Apostles,
especially in the one on the left, the repose of sleep is expressed in
so admirable and convincing a manner, that it would be difficult to
name a second painter of the _quattro-cento_ who could compare with
Bellini in this respect" (Richter). Nor is the advance one in the
technique of art only. The picture is one of the earliest in which art
made use of what Ruskin calls "the pathetic fallacy"--in which, that
is, art represents nature as sympathising with human emotion. Bellini
"called in nature," says Mr. Hodgson, R.A. (_Magazine of Art_, 1886,
p 215), "to sympathise with human sorrows, or rather he was the first
to point out that nature takes her colouring and her aspects from
the conditions of our passions and sentiments.[173] That sombre sky,
with its gleam along the horizon, that long dark hill, the wild plain
over which the traitor and his accomplices are stealing, have exactly
the aspect which they would present to one who stood there knowing
that a horrible treason was going to be perpetrated." Compare, for
this "pathetic fallacy" in painting, Titian's "Noli me tangere" (No.
270). Bellini's picture should be compared with Mantegna's of the same
subject in an adjoining room (1417). Mantegna seizes only the sublimity
of the idea of the Agony, Bellini's penetrating sympathy renders its
infinite pathos. Mantegna's picture is in some technical respects the
more accomplished; "but in all that concerns the imaginative conception
of the subject, in the harmonising of all the accessories to produce a
single profound impression on the emotions, above all in the large and
reposeful spaciousness of the composition, Bellini is surely the more
to be admired" (Roger Fry: _Giovanni Bellini_, p. 22). Both pictures
may be profitably compared with Correggio's of the same subject, in
which we are introduced to a new order of ideas (See notes on No. 76).


727. THE TRINITY.

  _Francesco Pesellino_ (Florentine: 1422-1457).

      This accomplished master was called Pesellino to distinguish
      him from his grandfather Pesello, by whom he was brought up. He
      is "entitled to one of the highest places in the ranks of the
      Florentine School of the fifteenth century. His compositions
      are distinguished by their lively grace, and the beautiful
      and truthful expressions of the persons portrayed" (Kugler).
      In beauty of colour and dignity of design the work before us
      is his masterpiece. He was a pupil of Fra Filippo Lippi, and
      subsequently opened a workshop in Florence in partnership
      with a certain Piero di Lorenzo. He died at the early age of
      thirty-five, leaving a widow and several children in penury.
      His works are very rare. Two compartments of a predella by
      him are in the Accademia at Florence, a fourth being in the
      Louvre. The collection of Morelli (now in the Public Gallery of
      Bergamo) contains three charming little pictures by him, which
      strongly recall the style of Fra Filippo (Morelli's account of
      the painter is in his _Roman Galleries_, pp. 253-58). "In the
      Torrigiani Palace at Florence are two remarkable panels from
      _cassoni_, there ascribed to Gozzoli, but by modern criticism
      more justly to Pesellino; they bear out Vasari's remark as to
      this painter's skill in delineating animals" (Burton).

This picture is perhaps the finest version extant of the conventional
Italian representation of the mystery of the Trinity. The Son on a
crucifix is supported by the Father, whilst the Holy Spirit in the
form of a dove hovers over the head of the Son. The head of the First
Person of the Trinity is a very majestic conception. "In this face,
so full of beauty and power, of intensity and calm, as well as the
careful modelling of the pathetic figure of Christ upon the cross,
Pesellino touches heights which Lippi could not reach; but in the
charming cherubim and seraphim with which the severity of the subject
is softened and decorated, and in the beauty of the colour (though
that has suffered much) we may recognise the influence of his master.
We have only to compare this picture with the representations of
the same subject by Landini (580_a_) and Orcagna (570) to show how
the power to render the most august subjects had been increased by
progress in technical accomplishment and the liberation of the artist's
imagination, even when the elements and arrangements of the composition
remained virtually unchanged from the traditional type" (Monkhouse, _In
the National Gallery_, p. 62). The picture is referred to by Vasari:
"At Pistoja is a work by Pesello, representing the Trinity, with
figures of San Zeno and San Jacopo" (ii. 115). On the suppression of
the religious congregation to whom the church of the Holy Trinity at
Pistoja belonged, the picture was sold, and passed into the collection
of Mr. Young Ottley. The side panels referred to by Vasari are still in
private collections.


728. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Beltraffio_ (Lombard: 1467-1516).

      Giovanni Antonio Beltraffio came of a noble family in Milan
      (his epitaph is in the Brera) and filled public offices in
      his native town. He fell under the influence of Leonardo, and
      when that master settled at Milan, Beltraffio lodged in his
      house, and became his ardent disciple. "His most ambitious
      creation, where he lamentably fails, is the Louvre altar-piece,
      the redeeming features of which are the fine portraits of the
      Casio family, his friends and patrons. When he confined himself
      to portraiture he was often strikingly successful, and the
      older Milanese families still possess a number of ancestral
      portraits by him, some of which are of great charm. He seems
      to have become the pet artist of the society of his day,
      often painting the portraits of his friends in the guise of
      a St. Sebastian, or as Sta. Barbara. He accompanied Leonardo
      to Rome in 1514. Although not a great artist, and entirely
      lacking in imagination and dramatic power, he exhibits singular
      refinement. His cultured intellect enabled him to appreciate,
      and in a measure reflect, the fastidious spirit of his master.
      His works charm by their high finish, and by the absence of
      all vulgarity or display. His portraits do not reveal much
      penetration, and he never caught the subtleties of character or
      the intellectual qualities of his sitters" (_Catalogue of the
      Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition_, 1898, p. lviii.). His
      pictures are for the most part on a small scale. Good specimens
      are to be seen in the Morelli collection at Bergamo, and the
      Poldi-Pezzoli collection at Milan. To delineate the human
      figure on a large scale, or human passions, was not his forte;
      he succeeded better in expressing naïve innocence in children,
      and gentle grace in the Mother of God, or devoted women
      (Morelli's _German Galleries_, pp. 425-48; _Roman Galleries_,
      p. 163).

Of Beltraffio's powers in the respect last mentioned this charming
picture is perhaps the best specimen extant. The child with its quaint
belly-band, and still more the noble but slightly languishing grace of
the mother, at once recall Leonardo.


729. THE ADORATION OF THE KINGS.

  _Vincenzo Foppa_ (Lombard: about 1425-1492).

      Foppa--Il Vecchio as he is called, to distinguish him from a
      younger Foppa of the Brescian School[174]--is an important
      person in the history of art. Born at Brescia, but removing
      in early manhood to Milan, he "holds both in the School of
      Brescia, and especially in that of Milan, the same place that
      the mighty Mantegna does at Padua, and Cosimo Tura at Ferrara,"
      representing that early period of development when force of
      character is more insisted on than beauty of expression. In
      relation to the Milanese, Foppa was the founder of the school
      which prevailed before and up to the time of Leonardo da
      Vinci. He was already an artist of repute in 1456, when he was
      employed to decorate the Medici Palace at Milan with frescoes.
      These works, and many others executed by him in Milan and the
      neighbourhood, have perished. His best remaining frescoes are
      those of the Four Fathers of the Church in S. Eustorgio at
      Milan. Foppa was also employed in Genoa and Savona. Late in
      life he returned to Brescia, where he received a renewed grant
      of citizenship, and a pension, and where also he died. Of his
      extant works, the earliest is a Crucifixion in the Bergamo
      gallery. This is dated 1456, and supports the statement of old
      writers that Foppa had studied under Squarcione at Padua. His
      latest work is the altar-piece, now in S. Maria di Castello at
      Savona. This belongs to the year 1490, and agrees in style with
      our National Gallery picture. Foppa is said to have written on
      perspective, and many painters of the Lombard School studied
      under him.

Traces of the older style of work, from which Foppa freed his school,
may here be seen in the embossed ornaments in gilt stucco. Notice
the daintiness of the picture throughout: the pretty flowers in the
foreground, the splendid brocades of the kneeling king, the birds
and weeds in the ruined stable. In the background are the star and
city of Bethlehem. "The general effect is dark and heavy, relieved
by an abundant use of red; the flesh tones, as usual, are of ashen
hue. The Madonna is of Foppa's characteristic type, of solid build.
It is interesting to find that there is little or no direct trace of
Leonardesque influence, a fact which shows that Foppa was too advanced
in years to modify perceptibly his style on the advent of the mighty
Florentine in 1481" (_Catalogue of the Burlington Fine Arts Club
Exhibition_, 1898, p. xxviii.).


732. A CANAL SCENE.

  _Aart van der Neer_ (Dutch: 1603-1677). _See 152._

The figures in the picture are supposed to be by Lingelbach (see No.
837).


734. A MILANESE LAWYER.

  _Andrea Solario_ (Lombard: about 1460-1520).

      Andrea belonged to an artist family, the Solari (of Solaro,
      a village near Saronna); one of his brothers, Christopher
      (nicknamed "Il Gobbo," the hunchback), was an architect and
      sculptor, and from him perhaps Andrea learnt his superb
      modelling of the head--a point which is conspicuous in this
      picture, and in which he surpassed all his contemporaries.
      His repute in his own time is attested by the journey he made
      to France in 1507. The Cardinal George of Amboise desired to
      entrust the decoration of a chapel to Leonardo; but Leonardo
      was too much taken up with hydraulic works at Milan to accept
      the commission, and the Cardinal's representative sent Andrea
      in the great man's place. It is not known with whom Solario
      studied painting, but his subject-pictures prove conclusively
      that he came within Leonardo's sphere of influence. "Although
      by birth and training a Lombard artist, Solario was so much in
      Venice that his native style was largely modified. There is
      no historical evidence that he ever met Antonello da Messina,
      but his works bear such close resemblance to that master's
      productions that it cannot be doubted they were acquainted.
      The portrait No. 923 is obviously Venetian in character;
      indeed, it passed not long since under Bellini's name. It seems
      unnecessary to suppose [with Morelli] that he paid a visit
      to Flanders. The Flemish traits so conspicuous in his work
      could well be derived from contact with Antonello. To the end
      of his life he painted with the utmost finish and delicacy.
      The brilliance and warmth of his colour compensate for the
      somewhat cold ivory pallor of his flesh tones. His landscapes
      are remarkably picturesque and full of incident. That behind
      the figure of Longono in the National Gallery portrait is of
      the greatest delicacy and charm" (_Catalogue of the Burlington
      Fine Arts Club Exhibition_, 1898, p. lxi. See also Morelli's
      _German Galleries_, pp. 63-68; _Roman Galleries_, pp. 170-176).
      Subject-pictures by Solario may be seen in the Brera and the
      Poldi-Pezzoli Gallery at Milan, and in the Louvre. His last
      work was a large "Assumption of the Virgin" for the Certosa of
      Pavia (now in the Sacristy), which his death prevented him from
      finishing.

A portrait (dated 1505) of the artist's friend, a Milanese lawyer,
whose name, John Christopher Longono, is written on a letter in his
right hand. He wears the gown and cap (not unlike that still worn
by French "advocates") of his profession. Observe the landscape
background--here quaintly peopled with prancing dogs and horses on
the left, and servants in red pushing off boats on the right--with
which the old painters, like some of our modern photographers, were
fond of flattering their subjects. But in this case the subject is
well entitled to his "setting," for he is a nobleman as well as a
lawyer, and the background is perhaps studied from his country seat.
On the bottom of the panel is a Latin inscription which, literally
interpreted, runs, "Not knowing what you have been or what you may be,
may it for long be your study to be able to see what you are," _i.e._
by looking at this picture of yourself--a neatly-turned compliment at
once to the painter and his subject: the picture is to last for many
a long year, and the lawyer for many a long year is to grow no older.
Or is the inscription also meant to describe the lawyer's character in
words, as the portrait does in colours--a man not troubled overmuch
with what has been or what may be hereafter, but one who is keenly
alive to what he is, and who pours all his powers into the tasks and
interests of the present?


735. ST. ROCH WITH THE ANGEL.

  _Paolo Morando_ (Veronese: 1486-1522).

      Paolo Morando, otherwise known as Cavazzola (his father was
      Taddeo Cavazzola di Jacobi di Morando), was a pupil of Morone
      (see 285). He "infused a higher life, and a fine system of
      colouring into the Veronese School, making thus a great advance
      upon his contemporaries, and preparing the way for Paul
      Veronese.... He shows, as Dr. Burckhardt has justly observed,
      'a marvellous transition from the realism of the fifteenth
      century to the noble free character of the sixteenth, not to an
      empty idealism'" (_Layard_, i. 270). His masterpieces are still
      in his native Verona, and nowhere else, except in the National
      Gallery, can he be studied.

St. Roch is the patron of the sick and plague-stricken. The legend
says that he left great riches to travel as a pilgrim to Rome, where
he tended those sick of the plague, and by his intercession effected
miraculous cures. Through many cities he laboured thus, until at last
in Piacenza he became himself plague-stricken, and with a horrible
ulcer in his thigh he was turned out into a lonely wood. He has here
laid aside his pilgrim staff and hung his hat upon it, and prepared
himself to die, when an angel appears to him and drops a fresh rose on
his path. There is no rose without a thorn, and no thorn in a saint's
crown without a rose. He bares his thigh to show his wound to the
angel, who (says the legend) dressed it for him, whilst his little dog
miraculously brought him every morning a loaf of bread.


736. A VENETIAN SENATOR.

  _Francesco Bonsignori_ (Veronese: 1455-1519).

      Called incorrectly, by Vasari, Monsignori. He was born at
      Verona, where, in the churches of S. Fermo, S. Bernardino, S.
      Paolo, and in the Pinacoteca, works by him may be seen. In
      the grand but not always attractive productions of his earlier
      style, Bonsignori followed the traditions and manner of the
      Veronese School. Later in life he went to Mantua, where he
      settled and was influenced by Mantegna (see Morelli's _German
      Galleries_, p. 103, _note_).

A portrait--remarkable for vigorous execution, and strong
individuality--of a senator, from the life, "in his habit as he
stood,"--a branch of art in which this painter excelled. He has been
called indeed "the modern Zeuxis," after the famous Greek painter whose
painted grapes deceived the birds. For so lifelike were Bonsignori's
pictures--says Vasari in his entertaining account of this painter--that
on one occasion a dog rushed at a painted dog on the artist's canvas,
whilst on another a bird flew forward to perch itself on the extended
arm of a painted child. The portrait before us is executed in tempera.
The study in chalk, for it is in the Albertina collection at Vienna.


737. A WATERFALL.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See 627._


739. THE ANNUNCIATION.

  _Carlo Crivelli_ (Venetian: painted 1468-1493). _See 602._

Mary is kneeling in her chamber; while a golden ray from a glory above,
piercing the house wall, has struck her head, over which is hovering a
dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit. The angel of the Annunciation is
outside in the court, but she cannot see him, for a wall stands between
them--"a treatment of the subject which may be intended to suggest
that the angel appeared to her in a dream." It also gives the painter
an opportunity for introducing an additional display of incident and
ornament. Beside the angel is St. Emidius, the patron saint of Ascoli,
with a model of the city in his hand. "There could not be better
examples of what we may call Crivelli's 'exquisite' style, which is
only just saved by its refinement from mere prettiness and affectation.
This angel is a _poseur_ if ever there was one." The picture is very
characteristic, in two features, of mediæval art. First, it was never
antiquarian: it did not attempt to give a correct historical setting
(_cf._ under 294). No mediæval painter made the Virgin a Jewess; they
nationalised her, as it were, and painted her in the likeness of their
own maidens. So too their scenery was the likeness of their own homes
and their own country. Here, for instance, is a picture of an Italian
city in gala attire, somewhat idealised, no doubt, in splendour, but
otherwise a "perfectly true representation of what the architecture of
Italy was in her glorious time; trim, dainty,--red and white like the
blossom of a carnation,--touched with gold like a peacock's plumes,
and frescoed, even to its chimney-pots, with fairest arabesques,--its
inhabitants, and it together, one harmony of work and life" (_Guide
to the Venetian Academy_, p. 21). And secondly, the picture shows
the pleasure the painters took in their accessories, and the frank
humour--free at once from irreverence and from gloom--with which the
Venetians especially approached what was to them a religion of daily
life. Notice especially the little girl at the top of the steps on the
left, looking round the corner. The whole of this side of the picture
shows a naturalistic treatment which forms "a curious accompaniment
and contrast to Crivelli's ordinary conventional manner. The group
talking with a friar at the house door, the citizen who passes along
bent on business, the dandy who shades his eyes from the sun and looks
up at the house, the figures on the arch, and the people walking in
the open space by the town walls beyond, make up a picture of real
life unequalled among Crivelli's works" (Rushworth's _Crivelli_, p.
63). As a representation of the "Annunciation," the picture should be
compared and contrasted with Lippi's (666). The Madonna and the Angel,
"though essential to the work from the point of view of the patrons,
who commissioned it, were merely its occasion from the point of view
of that extraordinarily painstaking and detail-loving creature, its
painter. There is endless profusion of decorative work; elaborate
arabesques on the pilasters of the Madonna's lordly house, elaborate
capitals, elaborate loggias, an elaborate cornice. The grain of the
wood on her reading-desk is carefully painted; so are the planks in
the wall of her bedchamber.... Besides the endless interest of its
decorative work, this picture is useful as marking the difference
between the spiritual and ideal motives which dominated Florence, and
the worldly motives of richness and splendour which dominated Venice.
Compare its purely adventitious detail with the poetical background of
Filippo Lippi. In the Florentine, the detail is there for the sake
of the picture; in the Venetian, the picture is there for the sake of
the detail" (Grant Allen, in the _Pall Mall Magazine_, July 1895). See
under 1139 for further notes on the subject.

The picture is signed and dated, 1486, at the bottom of the
pilasters of the Virgin's chamber. On the face of the step below
is an inscription between three coats of arms (the Bishop's, the
Pope's, and the town's)--_Libertas Ecclesiastica_, which is of some
historical interest. In the year 1482 the city of Ascoli came to an
agreement with the Pope, whereby, in return for an annual tribute
and the acknowledgment of his suzerainty, the Pope issued a Bull in
favour of its citizens, conferring on them municipal Home Rule. A new
phrase--_Libertas Ecclesiastica_, Independence under the Church--was
invented to describe the new settlement. The arrival of the Charter
on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, was celebrated henceforth
by ceremonies on that day, in which a procession to the church of the
Annunziata was a prominent feature. Our picture was painted for that
church, where it remained until 1790.


740. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Sassoferrato_ (Eclectic: 1605-1685). _See 200._


741. THE DEAD ORLANDO.

  _Ascribed to Velazquez_.[175] _See under 197._

The closing scene, according to one of the many legends, in the
history of that "peerless paladin," Orlando, or Roland, who was slain
at the battle of Roncesvalles, when returning from Charlemagne's
expedition against the Saracens in Spain. Invulnerable to the sword,
he was squeezed to death by Bernardo del Carpio. He lies, therefore,
prostrate, but fully dressed and armed, his right hand resting on his
chest, his left on the hilt of his famous sword. Over the dead man's
feet there hangs from a branch a small brass lamp, the flame of which,
like the hero's life, has just expired. On either side are the skulls
and bones of other "paladins and peers who on Roncesvalles died."


742. PORTRAIT OF A LAWYER.

  _Moroni_ (Bergamese: 1525-1578). _See 697._

An excellent example of the painter's third or naturalistic manner.
There is an ease of attitude and an absence of constraint which makes
the portrait transparently natural.


744. THE "GARVAGH MADONNA."

  _Raphael_ (Umbrian: 1483-1520). _See 1171._

This picture--known as the "Garvagh Madonna," from its former owner,
Lord Garvagh, or the "Aldobrandini Madonna," from having originally
belonged to the Aldobrandini apartments of the Borghese Palace at
Rome--belongs to Raphael's third or Roman period, and a comparison
with the "Ansidei" shows the changes in feeling between the painter's
earlier and later manners. The devotional character of the Umbrian
School is less marked. In the "Ansidei Madonna" the divinity of the
Virgin is insisted on; and above her throne is the inscription "Hail,
Mother of Christ." But here the divinity is only dimly indicated by a
halo. And as the Madonna is here a merely human mother, so is the child
a purely human child. The saints in contemplation of the "Ansidei" are
replaced by a little St. John, and the two children play with a pink.
The expressions of the children, as indeed the whole picture, are full
of sweetness and beauty.[176] Very beautiful too is the pyramidal
composition of the group. Of the ultimate significance of the change
marked by Raphael's third manner, Ruskin says that it--

      "Was all the more fatal because at first veiled by an
      appearance of greater dignity and sincerity than were
      possessed by the older art. One of the earliest results of
      the new knowledge was the putting away the greater part of
      the _unlikelihoods_ and fineries of the ancient pictures, and
      an apparently closer following of nature and probability.
      The appearances of nature were more closely followed in
      everything; and the crowned Queen-Virgin of Perugino sank
      into a simple Italian mother in Raphael's 'Madonna of the
      Chair.' ... But the glittering childishness of the old art
      was rejected, not because it was false, but because it was
      easy; and, still more, because the painter had no longer any
      religious passion to express. He could think of the Madonna
      now very calmly, with no desire to pour out the treasures of
      earth at her feet, or cover her brows with the golden shafts of
      heaven. He could think of her as an available subject for the
      display of transparent shadows, skilful tints, and scientific
      foreshortenings,--as a fair woman, forming, if well painted, a
      pleasant piece of furniture for the corner of a boudoir, and
      best imagined by combination of the beauties of the prettiest
      contadinas"[177] (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iv.
      §§ 12, 13).

It should, however, be remembered that the "Madonna di San Sisto,"
perhaps the most spiritual of all Raphael's conceptions, was the latest
of the series.


745. KING PHILIP IV. OF SPAIN.

  _Velazquez_ (Spanish: 1599-1660). _See 197._

Few kings have left so many enduring monuments of themselves as
Philip IV., whose face figures twice on these walls and meets one
in nearly every European gallery. But nowhere, perhaps, has it been
more supremely rendered than on this canvas, where the king seems to
live and move before us. The picture is "perhaps the finest example
of oil-painting accessible to the British student. Though one of the
later works of the master, it is constructed out of a carefully wrought
and smooth impasto, without any 'bravura' strokes. The lights are
nowhere loaded. The hair is painted, not modelled; the jewels on the
dress are easily touched in without relief-effect or juggling. The
wonder of the thing is the infinite variety over a surface so simply
treated. The face is in such broad, even light that one has to adopt
some device which brings it freshly into the field of vision--as by
turning the head down or looking at it through the hand--in order
to see how firm is the modelling. The flesh-tints are simple enough.
Yet take almost any square inch of surface on the face--say the upper
lip with its moustache--and note the effect of each one of the free
brush-strokes which draw the pale, umber hair over the warm rubbing
on the flesh; or in the cold, lack-lustre, blue eye, measure the
apparent ease of the touches against their firm, incisive clearness.
Everything is there--form, expression--in a word, the life; but it has
all grown into perfection on the canvas so quietly, so smoothly, as
if Velazquez had indeed painted with the will only and not with the
hand" (Baldwin Brown: _The Fine Arts_, p. 319). "Velazquez fuses his
colours in a way that baffles painters. They melt into each other by
imperceptible gradations, as he deals with plane after plane in his
subtly-modelled faces. Observe the action of light on the pallid face
of the worn-out king, giving to the skin the breath of life in its
delicate transparency" (_Quarterly Review_, April 1899).

The face is one which, once seen, is not soon forgotten. Velazquez,
as we have said, caught its expression at once, and by comparing the
face in its youth (1129) with its middle age here, one can almost
trace the king's career. In youth we see him cold and phlegmatic,
but slender in figure graceful and dignified in bearing, and with a
fine open forehead. But the young king was bent on ease and pleasure,
and his minister Olivares did nothing to persuade him into more
active kingship. The less pleasing traits in his character have, in
consequence, come to be deeper impressed at the time of this later
portrait. He was devoted to sport, and the cruelty of the Spaniard
is conspicuous in the lip--more underhung now than before. In the
growth of the double chin and yet greater impassiveness of expression,
one may see the traces of that "talent for dead silence and marble
immobility" which, says the historian, "he so highly improved that
he could sit out a comedy without stirring hand or foot, and conduct
an audience without movement of a muscle, except those in his lips
and tongue." It is not the face of a great ruler; but it is one which
rightly lives on a painter's canvas, for no king was ever at once so
liberal and so enlightened a patron of the arts as he. Himself too he
was something of an artist; and the best-known piece of his painting
tells a pretty story, which it is pleasant to remember in front of
Velazquez's portraits of him. Velazquez painted once his own portrait
in the background of the king's family (the "Maids of Honour"--Las
Meninas--now at Madrid). "Is there anything wrong with it?" Velazquez
asked. "Yes," said the king, taking the palette in his hand, "just
this"--and he sketched in on the painter's portrait the coveted red
cross of the order of Santiago. "In all his portraits Philip wears the
_golilla_, a stiff linen collar projecting at right angles from the
neck. It was invented by the king, who was very proud of it. In regard
to the wonderful structure of Philip's moustaches, it is said that, to
preserve their form, they were encased during the night in perfumed
leather covers called _bigoteras_" (J. F. White, in _Encyclopædia
Britannica_).


746. A LANDSCAPE WITH RUINS.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See 627._

This picture is signed and dated 1673.


747. ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST AND ST. LAWRENCE.

  _Ascribed to Hans Memlinc. See 686._

St. Lawrence may nearly always be distinguished by his gridiron--the
emblem of his martyrdom. He was a pious deacon of the Christian Church,
who was put to death by the Romans. A new kind of torture was, says the
legend, prepared for him. He was stretched on a sort of bed, formed of
iron bars in the manner of a gridiron, and was roasted alive. "But so
great was his constancy that in the middle of his torments he said,
'Seest thou not, O thou foolish man, that I am already roasted on one
side, and that, if thou wouldst have me well cooked, it is time to turn
me on the other?' Then St. Lawrence lifted up his eyes, and his pure
and invincible spirit fled to heaven."


748. MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH ST. ANNE.

  _Girolamo dai Libri_ (Veronese: 1474-1556).

      Girolamo inherited his surname ("of the books") from
      the occupation of his father, who was an illuminator of
      manuscripts. Girolamo himself excelled in this branch of art,
      but he also became famous as a painter of altar-pieces. He
      had "a playful fancy, and loved to introduce into his pictures
      festoons of flowers and fruit, trees of rich green foliage
      bearing lemons and oranges, and angels singing and playing on
      musical instruments. He was a true Veronese in his feeling
      for colour, which in his works is always rich and gay. In his
      backgrounds are frequently seen distant views of his native
      city, with her castellated hills and blue mountains" (Layard,
      i. 269). Girolamo, whose friendship with Francesco Morone
      (285) is on record, was born in Verona, and it is there that
      many of his principal works are preserved. In the Pinacoteca
      are several charming pictures, and there also is a collection
      of Girolamo's missals. In S. Giorgio Maggiore is a "Madonna
      Enthroned," dated 1526, which is by many considered the
      painter's masterpiece. The German artist Ludwig Richter,[178]
      thus records (in his _Lebenserinnerungen_) the impression
      it made upon him:--"I thought that I had scarcely ever seen
      anything so beautiful and touching. The picture was by Girolamo
      dai Libri, an old master of whom until then I had never heard,
      nor, indeed, have I seen any other picture by him since. Here
      it was that there first arose in me a suspicion of what a depth
      of spiritual life, and of the heavenly beauty that is born
      of it, lay in the masters of the pre-Raphaelite period. The
      master's way of seeing and feeling, his style--and the style
      is the man--impressed me deeply and permanently, touched me
      sympathetically. In fact this dear old painter became veritably
      my patron saint, for he it was who first opened to me the gates
      of the inner sanctuary of Art" (quoted by Dr. Richter, in the
      _Art Journal_, February, 1895).

A picture "with a pedigree," being mentioned by Vasari. "In the church
of the Scala (at Verona)," he says, in his life of the painter, "the
picture of the Madonna with St. Anna is by his hand, and is placed
between the San Sebastiano of Il Moro and the San Rocco of Cavazzola
(Morando)." The latter picture (735) and Girolamo's now hang on the
same wall of our Gallery. In the composition of this picture one may
trace, perhaps, the influence of the dainty work Girolamo was first
accustomed to. Thus the trefoil, or cloverleaf pattern, is followed
both in the arrangement of the Virgin, St. Anne, and the Child, and in
that of the little playing angels below. Notice the pretty trellis-work
of roses on either side, and the slain dragon at the Virgin's feet,
emblematic (the latter) of Christ's victory over the powers of evil,
and (the former) of the "ways of pleasantness" and "paths of peace"
that he came to prepare.


749. THE GIUSTI FAMILY OF VERONA.

  _Niccolo Giolfino_ (Veronese: painted 1486-1518).

Little is known of this painter except that he was a friend of
Mantegna. The façade of his house at Verona was painted with frescoes,
the upper part by Mantegna, the lower by Giolfino himself. He was
probably a scholar of Liberale, to whose altar-piece in the cathedral
at Verona he added the wings. One of his best works is a large
altar-piece in S. Anastasia in that city.

Two groups of family portraits, chiefly interesting for studies in
costume, originally in one picture, which formed the _predella_ of an
altar-piece: hence the upward look of some of the faces.


750. THE DOGE GIOVANNI MOCENIGO.

  _Lazzaro Bastiani_ (Venetian: about 1425-1512).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

This picture was, until recently, ascribed to Carpaccio, of whom,
therefore, some account is here retained. It was once inscribed with
Carpaccio's name and the date 1479, but these, having been shown to be
false, were removed. The work is now attributed, in accordance with the
conclusions reached by Signor Molmenti and Dr. Ludwig[179] to Bastiani.

      Lazzaro Bastiani was for many years the victim of one of
      Vasari's confusions. Carpaccio, we are told by that authority,
      "taught his art to two of his brothers, both of whom imitated
      him closely; one of these was called Lazzaro, the other
      Sebastiano." No such painters existed; but the name of Lazzaro
      Bastiani is on record as that of a painter already at work in
      1449. The presumption is, therefore, that he was not taught by,
      but the master of, Carpaccio, by which latter painter there
      is no dated work before 1490. Numerous records of later works
      by Bastiani from 1449 onwards have been discovered; and there
      is a public document of December 11, 1508, in which Bastiani
      and Carpaccio were appointed to value the frescoes executed by
      Giorgione on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Our picture, hitherto
      supposed to be an early work of Carpaccio, should be compared
      with the signed and dated (1484) work of Bastiani in the Duomo
      of Murano, representing a Canon kneeling before the Virgin.
      Other pictures by him are in the Academies of Vienna and Venice
      respectively.

      Various technical similarities between the work of Bastiani and
      Carpaccio are pointed out by Sig. Molmenti and Dr. Ludwig, but
      Bastiani's pictures lack the charm and gaiety of Carpaccio and
      his chief claim to fame is that which the critics now award him
      of having been the master of that great painter.

      The works of Vittore Carpaccio (about 1450-1522) have of recent
      years attracted great attention owing to the prominence given
      to them by Ruskin in all his writings since 1870. Of "The
      Presentation" in the Venetian Academy (dated 1510) he says:
      "You may measure yourself, outside and in,--your religion,
      your taste, your knowledge of art, your knowledge of men and
      things,--by the quantity of admiration which honestly, after
      due time given, you can feel for this picture. You are not
      required to think the Madonna pretty, or to receive the same
      religious delight from the conception of the scene which
      you would rightly receive from Angelico, Filippo Lippi, or
      Perugino. This is essentially Venetian,--prosaic, matter
      of fact,--retaining its supreme common-sense through all
      enthusiasm. Nor are you required to think this a first-rate
      work in Venetian colour. This is the best picture in the
      Academy, precisely because it is _not_ the best piece of
      colour there;--because the great master has subdued his own
      main passion, and restrained his colour-faculty, though the
      best in Venice, that you might _not_ say the moment you came
      before the picture, as you do of the Paris Bordone, '_What_ a
      piece of colour!' Carpaccio does not want you to think of _his_
      colour, but of _your_ Christ.... If you begin really to feel
      the picture, observe that its supreme merit is in the exactly
      just balance of all virtue;--detail perfect, yet inconspicuous;
      composition intricate and severe, but concealed under apparent
      simplicity; and painter's faculty of the supremest, used
      nevertheless with entire subjection of it to intellectual
      purpose." Other powers of Carpaccio are better seen in the St.
      Ursula Series, also in the Venetian Academy, and since Ruskin's
      day honourably hung. "They are," says Layard, "masterly works,
      rich in all that gives value and grandeur to historical art.
      The rather monotonous history which forms the groundwork of
      many of them is throughout varied and elevated by a free
      style of grouping and by happy moral allusions. The colours,
      notwithstanding injudicious cleanings and restorations, still
      shine with the purest light. The variety of expression,
      always lifelike, in the many figures, their beautiful and
      simple action, and the admirable dramatic representation of
      the different incidents connected with the story, give these
      pictures an inexpressible charm. The subject of the dream of
      the young St. Ursula, in bed in her chamber, with her table and
      an open book upon it and her vase of flowers, has a purity and
      simplicity quite unique" (i. 320). These pictures were painted
      1490-5. Of later date (1502-1511) is the series in the little
      church of S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni. They are full of the
      charm of picturesque reality, the wealth of rich and quaint
      accessories, the playful fancy and penetrative imagination,
      which characterise Carpaccio. Occasional works by him are to
      be seen in various continental galleries (_e.g._ Milan and
      Ferrara); but it is only in Venice that any adequate conception
      of him can be formed. Of his life little is known. He was
      born either in one of the Venetian islands, or in Istria. He
      generally signed himself "Victor Carpathius." Vasari calls him
      Scarpaccia; in old Venetian documents, he is Scarpaza. "He was
      associated with Gentile Bellini in executing the historical
      paintings for the Hall of the Great Council in the Ducal
      Palace, and it has been thought possible that he accompanied
      Gentile to Constantinople as an assistant. The minute knowledge
      of Oriental customs and costumes which his works display
      suggests that he had visited the East, and even those parts
      of it which were then still under the sway of the Sultans of
      Egypt" (Burton). Ruskin's criticisms, and descriptions of
      his principal pictures, will be found in his _Guide to the
      Academy at Venice, St. Mark's Rest_ (Supplements), and _Fors
      Clavigera_, 1872, xx.; 1873, xxvi.; 1876, pp. 329, 340, 357,
      381; 1877, p. 26; 1878, p. 182. An earlier reference is in the
      Oxford _Lectures on Art_, § 73. Copies from some of Carpaccio's
      "Schiavoni" pictures are in the Arundel Society's Collection.
      Copies of the "Ursula" series and other pictures made for
      Ruskin are in the St. George's Museum at Sheffield.

This is a votive picture commissioned by Giovanni Mocenigo (who
reigned over Venice 1477-1485), to be presented by him, according
to the custom with reigning doges, to the Ducal Palace. The scene
selected represents the doge kneeling before the Virgin and begging
her protection on the occasion of the plague of 1478. The gold vase on
the altar before the throne contains medicaments, for which, according
to the inscription below, a blessing is invoked: "Celestial Virgin,
preserve the City and Republic of Venice and the Venetian State, and
extend your protection to me if I deserve it." Behind the doge is his
patron saint St. John, on the opposite side is St. Christopher. The
setting thus chosen for the doge's picture is characteristic. "The
first step towards the ennobling of any face is the ridding it of its
vanity; to which aim there cannot be anything more contrary than that
principle of portraiture which prevails with us in these days, whose
end seems to be the expression of vanity throughout, in face and in
all circumstances of accompaniment; tending constantly to insolence
of attitude, and levity and haughtiness of expression, and worked out
further in mean accompaniments of worldly splendour and possession;
together with hints or proclamations of what the person has done or
supposes himself to have done, which, if known, it is gratuitous in the
portrait to exhibit, and, if unknown, it is insolent to proclaim.... To
which practices are to be opposed ... the mighty and simple modesty
of ... Venice, where we find the ... doges not set forth with thrones
and curtains of state, but kneeling, always crownless, and returning
thanks to God for his help; or as priests, interceding for the nation
in its affliction" (_Modern Painters_, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch.
xiv. § 19). The picture was bought in 1865 from the Doge's descendant,
Aloise Count Mocenigo di Sant' Eustachio.


751. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Giovanni Santi_ (Umbrian: about 1440-1494).

      This picture is of peculiar interest because it is by Raphael's
      father. It does not, however, give a full idea of the extent
      to which Raphael's talent was hereditary, for Giovanni's easel
      pictures, such as this, are inferior to his wall pictures.
      The young Raphael had all the advantages of an atmosphere of
      artistic culture. Giovanni, like his father before him, was
      a well-to-do burgher, and kept originally a general retail
      shop, but he afterwards--under the teaching, it is thought,
      of Melozzo da Forli--took to painting, and his house, if one
      may judge from Piero della Francesca's visit in 1467, was a
      resort of painters. At the brilliant court of Duke Federigo of
      Urbino, Giovanni moreover acquired a taste for literature, and
      there is a long rhyming chronicle by him extant in which he
      describes the Duke's visit to Mantua, and amongst other things
      praises greatly the works of Mantegna, Melozzo, and Piero
      della Francesca. But to see how much of Raphael's genius was
      original, one has only to compare this picture by the father
      with one (say 744) by the son. Giovanni's female heads are not
      without a mild dignity of their own; but his works lack the
      soft grace and winning charm that distinguish his son's.

"Worth study, in spite of what critics say of its crudity. Concede its
immaturity, at least, though an immaturity visibly susceptible of a
delicate grace, it wins you nevertheless to return again and again,
and ponder, by a sincere expression of sorrow, profound, yet resigned,
be the cause what it may, among all the causes of sorrow inherent in
the ideal of maternity, human or divine. But if you keep in mind,
when looking at it, the facts of Raphael's childhood,[180] you will
recognise in his father's picture, not the anticipated sorrow of the
Mater Dolorosa over the dead son, but the grief of a simple household
over the mother herself taken early from it. This may have been the
first picture the eyes of the world's great painter of Madonnas rested
on; and if he stood diligently before it to copy, and so copying,
quite unconsciously, and with no disloyalty to his original, refined,
improved, substituted,--substituted himself, in fact, his finer
self--he had already struck the persistent note of his career" (Pater:
_Miscellaneous Studies_, p. 32).


752. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Lippo Dalmasii_ (Bolognese: painted 1376-1410).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

A picture by a Bolognese artist, of the _Giottesque_ period, Lippo,
son of Dalmasius, called also "Lippo of the Madonna," from the many
pictures like this he painted: no Bolognese gentleman's family, we are
told, was considered complete without one.


753. ON THE ROAD TO EMMAUS.

  _Altobello Melone_ (Cremonese: painted about 1500).

      There was no native and independent school of Cremona. Melone
      was a pupil of Romanino at Brescia. He painted some of the
      frescoes in the nave of Cremona Cathedral.

Two of Christ's disciples are walking after his death and burial to
Emmaus. The risen Christ "drew near, and went with them. But their
eyes were holden, that they should not know him" (Luke xxiv. 16). The
painter makes excuses for the disciples not recognising their Master by
naïvely dressing Him as a tourist with an alpenstock.


  755. RHETORIC.}
  756. MUSIC.   }

  _Melozzo da Forli_ (Umbrian: 1438-1494).

      Melozzo, born at Forli in the Romagna, near Ravenna, is classed
      with the Umbrian School, both because he studied (it is
      believed) under Piero della Francesca, and because he worked at
      Urbino. Giovanni Santi, who was his friend, especially praises
      Melozzo, "to me so dear," for his skill in perspective; and,
      like many other artists of these times, he was an architect
      as well as a painter. In 1472 he was in Rome; he was one of
      the original members of the Roman Academy of St. Luke, founded
      by Sixtus IV., and in the book of the Academy he signs his
      name as "Painter to the Pope." Some of his Roman frescoes are
      preserved. In the Vatican gallery is a fresco transferred to
      canvas, commemorating the restoration of the Vatican Library
      and containing many portraits. This work has been published by
      the Arundel Society, but Melozzo is more widely known by the
      figures of angels playing on musical instruments, now in the
      sacristy of St. Peter's, which have been published by the same
      Society. These grand figures of youths with abundant flowing
      hair are "among the most beautiful and masterful creations
      of the Renaissance spirit, caught up, it would seem, into a
      certain ecstasy and rapture of divine things." Portions of a
      fresco, painted for SS. Apostoli, representing the Ascension
      of our Lord, are now on the staircase of the Quirinal Palace.
      The work was "one of the most grand and daring feats of
      foreshadowing that art has bequeathed, and may be considered
      as the first illustration of that science which Mantegna and
      Correggio further developed" (Kugler). In this connection we
      may notice in our pictures that "the steps and the figures
      thereon are drawn in perspective, as if they were real objects
      seen from below; they present the earliest example the Gallery
      possesses of this kind of perspective illusion, which was
      practised with great success by Mantegna, and carried out on
      the grandest scale by Michael Angelo in the ceiling of the
      Sistine chapel" (Monkhouse, _In the National Gallery_, p. 115).
      About the year 1480 Melozzo went to Urbino, where he executed
      the work described below. In Forli itself a few frescoes by
      Melozzo survive. In the British Museum there are some drawings
      by this rare master.

These pictures are two of a series of seven, which were painted for
the good Duke Frederick to decorate the library of the Ducal Palace
at Urbino. The words on the frieze above our pictures are portions
of a running inscription describing the Duke's style and titles. He
was created "Gonfaloniere of the Church" (756) in 1465 and "Duke
of Urbino" (755) in 1474. The series represented symbolically the
seven arts--grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, music, geometry,
and astronomy--which, until the close of the Middle Ages, formed
the curriculum of a liberal education. Notice in both pictures that
the figures of the learners are kneeling--an attitude symbolical of
the spirit of reverence and humility which distinguishes the true
scholar ("I prayed, and the spirit of wisdom came upon me"); whilst
the figures representing the sciences to be learned are seated on
thrones--symbolical of the true kingship that consists in knowledge
("And I set her before kingdoms and thrones"), and are clothed about
with pearls and other precious stones ("She is more precious than
rubies").

In the picture of Rhetoric (755) the youth is being taught not to
speak, but to read--"You must not speak," the Queen of Rhetoric seems
to tell him, "until you have something to say." Notice, too, that
Rhetoric is robed in cold gray. "You think Rhetoric should be glowing,
fervid, impetuous? No. Above all things,--cool."

But Music (756) is robed in bright red, the colour of delight. The book
now is closed. "After learning to reason, you will learn to sing; for
you will want to. There is so much reason for singing in this sweet
world, when one thinks rightly of it." Music points her scholar to a
small organ--"not that you are never to sing anything but hymns, but
that whatever is rightly called music, or work of the Muses, is divine
in help and healing" (_Mornings in Florence_, v. 128, 134). Hanging
from the wall on the left, almost above the scholar's head, is a sprig
of bay, the Muses' crown. Other pictures of this same series are in the
gallery at Berlin and in the Royal Collection at Windsor. The latter
is of peculiar interest in the history of the Renaissance. It shows
the Duke, his son and the Court, and a black-robed humanist, seated in
a sort of pulpit--"the unique representation of a scene of frequent
occurrence in the Courts of Italy, where listening to lectures formed a
part of every day's occupation" (_see_ the description in Symonds, ii.
p. 221).


757. CHRIST BLESSING LITTLE CHILDREN.

  _Unknown_ (Dutch: School of Rembrandt).

This is one of the nation's conspicuously bad bargains. It was bought
in 1866 as a Rembrandt and at a Rembrandt price (£7000), but was soon
recognised as being only a work by some pupil. It is easy to be wise
after the event, but it certainly seems strange that the connoisseurs
of the time, even if technical differences had escaped them, should
not have seen a lack of Rembrandt's power about this work. A writer in
the _Times_ (June 24, 1888) has no hesitation in ascribing the picture
to Nicolas Maes. He says: "If it was painted by Maes it would probably
have been after the series of small works, mostly dating about 1656.
Maes was a pupil of Rembrandt in 1650, at the time when the master's
treatment of sacred subjects was more direct than in his earlier years.
In this picture fanciful costume is discarded, and the figures are
painted straight from the life. The figure of Christ is, indeed, weak
and conventional, but it is not to be expected that a young man would
here be successful in a figure so foreign to his general practice;
and, if we admit the supposition that the composition followed the
small panels, the relaxation of style pervading the entire work tallies
with the known facts of the career of Maes, who between 1660 and 1670
appears to have devoted himself almost entirely to portrait painting;
these representations of Dutch and Antwerp burghers, though solid and
respectable, possess none of the charm and interest of the earlier
works owing their inspiration to the direct influence of Rembrandt."
(See, for instance, No. 1277.) Some ascribe the picture with equal
assurance to Lievens (see 1095); see an article by Ford Madox Brown
in the _Magazine of Art_, Feb. 1890; others to Eeckhout (see _The
Athenæum_, Jan. 19, 1907).


758. PORTRAIT OF THE COUNTESS PALMA OF URBINO.

  _Piero della Francesca_ (Umbrian: 1416-1492). _See 665._

      Ascribed by Morelli to Paolo Uccello. "The treatment of
      the hair recalls that of one of the portraits in Paolo's
      battle-piece (583), while Piero used to represent curls in a
      thin and thread-like shape. The ornament on the left sleeve of
      the lady also reminds one of the decoration on the standard"
      (Richter's _Italian Art in the National Gallery_, p. 17). "Of
      purely Florentine origin, and with its hardness of outline and
      modelling, and its severity of aspect, resembles a Pesellino
      writ large" (Claude Phillips in the _Academy_, Sept. 28, 1889).

This and the other profile head once ascribed to Piero (585) "are
probably the earliest specimens we have in the National Gallery of pure
portraits, _i.e._ pictures devoted simply to record the likeness of an
individual, first introduced as donors into votive pictures, and next
as actors in scenes from sacred history and legend. Portraits have
at length made good their claim to a separate existence in pictorial
art" (Monkhouse: _The Italian Pre-Raphaelites_, p. 41). To Piero
della Francesca also we owe "most precious portraits (at Rimini and
in the Uffizi) of two Italian princes, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta
and Federigo of Urbino, masterpieces of fidelity to nature and sound
workmanship" (Symonds).


766, 767. HEADS OF SAINTS.

  _Domenico Veneziano_ (died 1461).

      Though Domenico describes himself as Venetian (as on the
      signature to 1215), he worked at Perugia and Florence, and his
      works belie any connection with Venetian art. Between 1439 and
      1445 he was engaged in the church of S. Maria Nuova, in which
      work he was assisted by his pupil Piero della Francesca.
      These pictures have perished. The works by his hand we possess
      give no evidence of his being an oil painter, but he is known
      to have used oil, and indeed was celebrated as one of the
      earliest Italian painters in that medium. Vasari's story about
      Andrea del Castagno's jealousy, and his murder of Domenico
      in consequence, is disproved by documentary evidence showing
      that Domenico survived his alleged murderer by five years.
      Domenico's only known works, now extant, are an altar-piece in
      the Uffizi and the work described below.

These heads are from the niche or tabernacle which contained the
Madonna and Child, No. 1215. The work was executed for the Canto
(street corner) de' Carnesecchi in Florence. It is thus referred to by
Vasari:--

      Being invited to Florence, the first thing Domenico did was to
      paint a tabernacle in fresco, at the corner of the Carnesecchi,
      in the angle of the two roads, leading, the one to the new, the
      other to the old Piazza of Santa Maria Novella. The subject of
      this work is a Virgin surrounded by various saints, and as it
      pleased the Florentines greatly and was much commended by the
      artists of the time, as well as by the citizens, this picture
      awakened bitter rage and envy against poor Domenico in the
      ill-regulated mind of Andrea (ii. 99--here follows Vasari's
      rattling and reckless story of Domenico's murder by the jealous
      Andrea del Castagno).

For centuries Domenico's work was exposed to wind and weather. The
heads, Nos. 766, 767, passed into the possession of Sir Charles
Eastlake, from whose collection they were purchased for the National
Gallery in 1867. The central fresco (No. 1215) was in 1851 detached
from the wall and badly restored. It was subsequently acquired by Lord
Lindsay, the author of _Sketches of the History of Christian Art_,
whose son, James, Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, presented it to the
nation in 1886.


768. ST. PETER AND ST. JEROME.

  _Antonio Vivarini_ (Venetian: died 1470).

      Antonio da Murano, called also Antonio Vivarini, was the eldest
      of a family of painters, who played a part in the development
      of the Venetian School corresponding to that of Giotto and his
      circle in the Florentine School. The Venetian is, it will be
      seen, a century later than the Florentine (_cf._ Introduction).
      It was at the adjacent island of Murano (where most of the
      Venetian glass is now made, and which was once the resort of
      the wealthier Venetian citizens) that an independent school
      first developed itself, Antonio and his brother Bartolommeo
      (see 284) being natives of that place. The work of the
      Vivarini was to impart a distinctively artistic impulse to the
      conventional craftsmanship which previously prevailed in Venice
      in accordance with Byzantine traditions. Recently published
      documents (dated 1272) give a curious insight into the position
      and work of the earliest Venetian painters (see Richter's
      _Lectures on the National Gallery_, pp. 23-29). They were
      treated merely as artisans. They were engaged for the most part
      in work which would now be classed as industrial craftsmanship
      in painting arms and furniture. Paintings, in our sense of the
      word, were an unimportant and occasional branch of their work.
      The division of labour which in our own day is a frequent cause
      of industrial disputes (as, for instance, between builders and
      plasterers) was then in dispute between painters and gilders.
      A recorded case was settled as follows: "We judge it just
      to permit the gilder to use colour, and the painter to use
      gilding, when the one or the other plays a subordinate part in
      the finished work. A decision in the opposite sense would seem
      to us hard; for it would be inconvenient to decree that a work
      which can be done by one, must be done by two. Thus, though
      each litigant loses, each is compensated for his loss. The
      profession of the gilder is gilding, but painting is permitted
      as an accessory. In like manner painting is the profession of
      the painter, but gilding is permitted as an accessory." In
      this picture, St. Peter's key is, it will be seen, embossed
      in goldsmiths' fashion, and Bartolommeo's picture has a gold
      background. Antonio Vivarini first worked in partnership with
      a certain Zuan (Giovanni), who appears to have been a German
      by birth, and the visitor will notice between the work of the
      early Venetian School a certain affinity with the contemporary
      German work of the Cologne School. After 1450 the name of
      Johannes the German disappears from the inscriptions on
      Vivarini altar-pieces, and that of Bartolommeo takes its place.


769. ST. MICHAEL AND THE DRAGON.

  (_Umbrian_: 1416-1492). _See 665._

      Formerly ascribed to Fra Carnovale (Bartolommeo Corradini); but
      between Piero della Francesca's angels in 908 and the figure of
      St. Michael here there is a close resemblance, which seems to
      identify the picture as his.

St. Michael, the angel of war against the dragon of sin, stands
triumphant over his foe--emblem of the final triumph of the spiritual
over the animal and earthly part of our nature. It is the most
universal of all symbols. The victor is different in different ages,
but the enemy is always the same crawling reptile. Christian art, from
its earliest times, has thus interpreted the text, "The dragon shalt
thou trample under feet" (Psalm xci. 13); and in illustrations of
Hindoo mythology Vishnu suffering is folded in the coils of a serpent,
whilst Vishnu triumphant stands like St. Michael, with his foot upon
the defeated monster.


770. LEONELLO D'ESTE.

  _Giovanni Oriolo_ (Ferrarese: painted about 1450).

      Of Oriolo nothing is known. He was probably by birth a
      Ferrarese, and was evidently a pupil of Pisano (see 776).

Leonello (of whom also there is a medallion portrait in the frame of
the picture just referred to), of the house of Este, was Marquis of
Ferrara, 1441-1450. His mild and kindly face agrees well with what is
known of his life. The one important action of his reign was that of a
peacemaker, when he mediated between Venice and the King of Anjou. "He
had not his equal," says Muratori, "in piety towards God, in equity and
kindness towards his subjects. He was the protector of men of letters
and was himself a good Latin scholar."


771. ST. JEROME IN THE DESERT.

  _Bono_ (Ferrarese: painted about 1450).

      In the signature of this picture, "Bono of Ferrara" announces
      himself "a pupil of Pisano's," and the figure of St. Jerome
      here much resembles Pisano's "St. Anthony" (776). Bono's other
      known work is a fresco of St. Christopher in the Eremitani
      Chapel at Padua. "A clumsy and inferior master," says Morelli
      (_German Galleries_, p. 11 _n._); "an excellent painter," says
      Sir F. Burton. His style is, at any rate, precise and effective.

St. Jerome (for whom see 773 and 227) is in the desert, deep in
thought; his lion couched at his feet keeps his master's thoughts
company as faithfully as a scholar's dog. The desert is here shown as
the saint's study; notice, especially, the little table that the rock
makes behind him for his books. Ruskin says of a similar modification
of accessories to express supernatural character, in Bellini's "St.
Jerome" at Venice: "The Saint sits upon a rock, his grand form defined
against clear green open sky; he is reading; a noble tree springs out
of a cleft in the rock, bends itself suddenly back to form a rest
for the volume, then shoots up into the sky. There is something very
beautiful in this obedient ministry of the lower creature; but be it
observed that the sweet feeling of the whole depends upon the service
being such as is consistent with its nature. It is not animated,
it does not _listen_ to the saint, not bend itself towards him as
if in affection; this would have been mere fancy, illegitimate and
effectless. But the simple bend of the trunk to receive the book is
miraculous subjection of the true nature of the tree; it is therefore
imaginative, and very touching" (_Modern Painters_, vol. ii. pt. iii.
sec. ii. ch. v. § 8).


772. MADONNA AND CHILD ENTHRONED.

  _Cosimo Tura_ (Ferrarese: 1420-1495).

      Cosimo Tura (pronounced Cosmè in Ferrarese) is the first
      Ferrarese painter of eminence and of native talent whose
      works have come down to us. He was a well-to-do citizen, and,
      like Titian after him, dealt in timber. As an artist he was
      in the service of Duke Borso of Ferrara (whose portrait is
      introduced in the background of No. 773), and other members
      of the princely house of Este. The court of Ferrara was then
      one of the most learned of Italy. A curious instance occurs in
      this picture, where, on either side of the Virgin's throne,
      are inscribed the Commandments, in Hebrew characters. Such
      inscriptions are common in Ferrarese pictures, and point to
      the presence of some Hebrew scholar or scholars. It was at
      this court that Cosimo came under the influence of Flemish
      art as described below, for the house of Este (which was of
      Lombard origin, and thus had a natural affinity perhaps for
      northern art) had invited Roger van der Weyden to Ferrara. Tura
      was "first employed by the Duke of Ferrara in 1451. Between
      1452 and 1456 his whereabouts are uncertain. Possibly he was
      then in Padua among the followers of Squarcione, or else in
      Venice, to the poor of which city he left by will part of the
      fruits of his long and industrious life. In 1458 he rose to
      a fixed appointment in the Ducal service. He made a fortune,
      risked it in trade, and died a wealthy man" (Catalogue of the
      Burlington Fine Arts Club's Exhibition, 1894, p. xv.). Some
      of his works are to be seen at Ferrara, others are in the
      Berlin Gallery, at Bergamo, and the Correr Museum at Venice.
      He is one of the most unmistakable and least fascinating, yet
      most interesting of painters. Of beauty or grace in the human
      figure he had no perception. His colour schemes are peculiar,
      and harmonious rather than beautiful. But he had sincerity
      of purpose and vigour of manipulation. Where his subjects
      lend themselves to strength, he is impressive, as in the "St.
      Jerome" (773), but his Madonnas (772 and 905) are both affected
      and ugly. His patience in the execution of detail, and quaint
      if superabundant ornament, are always interesting. The picture
      now before us is thoroughly characteristic of a master who
      alternately repels and attracts.

The decorative detail here deserves close attention. Compare, for
instance, the ornament of the pilasters here with that of the pilasters
in Crivelli's "Annunciation" (739), which was painted about the same
time. "Crivelli follows the traditional lines common to all such
features from later Roman times downwards, while Tura's accessories
are full of inventiveness and are evidently designed for this especial
picture. Thus the cup, balls, and wing-like appendages in the pilaster
are quite original. The general scheme of colour in the picture, also,
with its contrasts of red and green, is quite apart from anything
existing in contemporary Italian art, and recalls rather a Flemish
stained-glass window of the fifteenth century" (G. T. Robinson in _Art
Journal_, May 1886, pp. 149, 150). The musical instruments are also
worth notice. "One of the angels, on the left, holds an ornamental
viol, having five strings, with a carved man's head; another angel, on
the right, holds a similar viol, with a carved woman's head. In the
centre is placed a positive organ--that is, a small organ not intended
for removal. The player is on the left, in front of the organ; the
blower is on the right, behind it. Only natural keys are visible, but
there are three stops to be drawn out from the side, in the primitive
way, by means of cords attached to them, to control the pipes, of which
thirty are visible and three are drones. These pipes are grouped in
columnar disposition, like an hour-glass, and not in the order of ranks
usual with small organs. It is noticeable that the player uses both
hands, held nearly in the modern position" (A. J. Hipkins in _The Hobby
Horse_, No. i. p. 19).


773. ST. JEROME IN THE DESERT.

  _Cosimo Tura_ (Ferrarese: 1420-1495). _See 772._

        Jerome knocking at his poor old breast
    With his great round stone to subdue the flesh--

and schooling himself into renunciation of the world, the flesh, and
the devil. In contrast to the wildness of the surroundings, the painter
introduces quite a company of birds and beasts--an owl sits in sedate
wisdom above the saint, his familiar lion is walking to the stream for
water, and in the crannies and ledges are other animals to keep him
company. For it was his union of gentleness and refinement with noble
continence, his love and imagination winning even savage beasts into
domestic friends, that distinguished St. Jerome and formed the true
monastic ideal (see 227).


774. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Unknown_ (Flemish School: 15th century).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

On the Madonna's right is St. Peter; on her left St. Paul, an
arrangement common in early art, St. Peter and St. Paul being the two
chief apostles on whom the Church of Christ is built. St. Paul offers
a pink to the infant Christ. Flowers were consecrated to the Virgin,
and the early painters chose those they liked best to be emblems of
love and beauty. Notice the design on the stuff fixed at the back of
the Madonna's throne; it is a beautiful example of the ornamental work
of the time in northern Europe. The picture was formerly ascribed to
Van der Goes--an artist whose only certainly known picture is the
altar-piece in the hospital of S. Maria Nuova in Florence,--and is by
some ascribed to Bouts (see under 783).


775. AN OLD LADY.

  _Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See 45._

An old lady, eighty-three years of age (as the inscription shows). This
splendid portrait is dated 1634, and was made therefore when Rembrandt
was twenty-eight. His mother was from the first a favourite sitter of
his, and hence, perhaps, the affectionate fidelity with which he always
painted the wrinkled faces of old age. In the British Museum there is
an Indian-ink copy of this portrait, from which it appears that the
lady's name was Françoise van Wasserhoven. Rembrandt, says M. Michel,
"is most individual and moving in those portraits of old women, in
which by the accidents of form and feature he so admirably suggests the
moral life."


776. ST. ANTHONY AND ST. GEORGE.

  _Vittore Pisano_ (Veronese: 1380-1452).

      The earliest picture of the Veronese School in the Gallery. "No
      school of painting in Italy except the Florentine shows," says
      Morelli, "so regular and uninterrupted a development, from the
      thirteenth to the seventeenth century, as the graceful school
      of Verona. If we look, for example, at some of the oldest
      frescoes at St. Zeno, at the frescoes of the great Pisanello
      in S. Anastasia of the first half of the fifteenth century, at
      the pictures of Liberale (1134 and 1336) and Domenico Morone
      (1211), and of their pupils Francesco Morone (285), Girolamo
      dai Libri (748), Michele da Verona (1214), Giolfino (749),
      and Morando (735 and 769), and then to Paolo Veronese and his
      followers, we find everywhere the same cheerful and graceful
      character looking out of each of these works of the Veronese
      School. The Veronese do not penetrate so deep into the essence
      of art as the Venetians, but they are, with few exceptions,
      more gracious and serene. And to this day the population of
      this beautifully situated town is reckoned the cheeriest
      and gayest in all Italy: _Veronesi, mezzo natti_" (_German
      Galleries_, p. 395). In the National Gallery the development
      of the Veronese School may, as will be seen from the
      references inserted above, be well studied. The importance and
      independence of the Veronese painters are shown by the career
      of Vittore Pisano, commonly called by the endearing diminutive
      Pisanello. He was born at St. Vigilio, near the Lake of Garda,
      and was probably a pupil of Altichiero, an older master of the
      Veronese School, and was famous as the inventor of a method of
      casting medals; but though better known now as a medallist, in
      his own day he was equally famous as a painter. In the frame of
      this picture are inserted casts from two of his medals, and it
      will be noticed that the lower one--a profile of himself--is
      inscribed Pisanus Pictor; Pisano the Painter. The medal above
      is that of Leonello d'Este, his patron, for whom this picture
      was probably painted, and whose portrait by a pupil of Pisano
      is in our Gallery (770). At Bergamo is a portrait of Leonello
      by Pisano himself (reproduced in the Illustrated Catalogue of
      the Morelli Gallery by Signor Frizzoni). Another evidence of
      Pisano's practice as a medallist will be noticed in the gilt
      embossed work of St. George's sword and spurs. Leonello wrote
      of Pisano as "the most illustrious of all the painters of
      this age," and contemporary writers similarly extol his fame.
      In 1421 he was summoned to Venice. "When, in the beginning
      of the fifteenth century, great monumental works in painting
      were to be carried out at Venice, the local school was still
      so insignificant that no native artist could be entrusted
      with the commission. They were obliged to summon Vittore
      Pisano, notwithstanding that he had once been on the list of
      the politically obnoxious, and as such was liable to penal
      consequences" (Richter). Pisano was accompanied by Gentile da
      Fabriano. "The presence of those two eminent artists in the
      city of the Lagoons gave," says Morelli, "a new impulse to
      its school of painting. Jacopo Bellini became a scholar of
      Gentile, and when his master had finished his work at Venice he
      accompanied him to Florence. During the few years of their stay
      at Venice, Gentile and Pisanello must not only have instructed
      Bellini in their art, but their influence on Antonio Vivarini
      of Murano also seems to me undeniable.... Taking him all in
      all, I consider that Giovanni Bellini was the greatest painter
      in North Italy in the fifteenth century, though undoubtedly
      Pisano was in the first half of the century as great a painter
      as was Bellini in the second half" (_German Galleries_, p.
      357; _Roman Galleries_, p. 267). Of Pisano's wall-paintings
      in the Doge's Palace, in that of the Pope, and in the castles
      of the foremost princes of the century, no traces remain. His
      fresco of "St. George mounting for the fight" may be seen
      in the church of St. Anastasia at Verona. Among his very
      rare easel-pictures the one now before us is signed and very
      original in conception; No. 1436 is the most important, and
      is especially interesting as illustrating Pisano's love of
      representing animals, and the high reputation he enjoyed for
      his skill in doing so. "Vittore lived," says Sir F. Burton,
      "at a time when the traditions and forms of chivalry had not
      yet died out; and all his works, including his delicate and
      spirited pen-drawings in the Louvre, have a certain stamp of
      knightly grace which is singularly attractive: in this respect
      they resemble the creations of Gentile da Fabriano."

The subject of the picture--a meeting between St. George and St.
Anthony, with a vision of the Virgin and Child above--is not to be
found in the legends of the saints, and Pisano's conception is quite
original. St. George appears to have been a favourite subject with the
artist--probably because of the way in which his armour lent itself to
medallion-like treatment. There is a good instance of frank anachronism
in the large Tuscan hat of Pisano's own day which he quaintly makes St.
George wear, "according to the everyday custom of the Italian noblemen
at their country-seats in the summer."[181] Perhaps too the painter
chose St. George partly because he involved a horse and a dragon, and
Pisano, says Vasari, "took especial pleasure in the delineation of
animals." This may have given him a weakness for the boar of good St.
Anthony--the hermit saint whose temptations have passed into a proverb.
The saint carries a bell, for "it is said that the wicked spirits that
be in the region of the air fear much when they hear the bells ringen,"
and a staff, another means of exorcising the devil; whilst the boar,
now tamed into service, is symbolical of the demon of sensuality which
St. Anthony vanquished. And here perhaps we find the clue to the idea
in the picture. For the dragon whom St. George slew represents the
same sensual enemy. St. George conquered by fighting, St. Anthony by
fasting. The two saints now meet when "each on his course alone" has
"worked out each a way." The old man, whose life has been spent in
struggle, greets the triumphant youth with curious surprise; and St.
George too, with the thoughtful look on his face, will have much to
say and learn. But over them both, as to all who overcome, the heavens
open in beatific vision; for though there be diversity of gifts, it
is the same spirit. The signature of the painter (Pisanus pinxit) is
fantastically traced by herbage in the foreground.


777. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Paolo Morando_ (Veronese: 1486-1522). _See 735._

A picture of great beauty, which goes far to justify the title of
"the Raphael of the Veronese School" by which Morando has been
distinguished. Every visitor will be struck by the unpretentious
simplicity of conception, the rich colours and the sweet faces--with
just a dash of Raphaelesque affectation. It is interesting to note that
Morando was almost exactly contemporary with Raphael, while his art
exhibits a maturity developed under totally different circumstances.
For Morando never left Verona, and was thus, says Sir F. Burton, "a
pure growth of the native Veronese School. His colouring, though often
brilliant, is rather cold; the pale flesh-tints, glossy in surface, are
shadowed with grey, and even the lake reds introduced in garments tend
towards that purplish hue which the best colourists avoid."


778. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Martino da Udine_ (Venetian: 1470-1547).

      Martino of Udine was called also Pellegrino of San Daniele (a
      village near the former place). According to Vasari, he was a
      pupil of Giovanni Bellini, who, astonished at the marvellous
      progress of his pupil, gave him the name of Pellegrino--that
      is, rare, extraordinary. More probably, however, it should
      be interpreted merely as a stranger or foreigner at Udine,
      Martino being of Dalmatian origin (see for a full account and
      discussion of this painter Morelli's _German Galleries_, pp.
      18-23). He was, says Sir F. Burton, "one of those men who,
      with little native genius, have yet the capacity of absorbing
      material from others, and of working it into new forms with
      success. Thus Pellegrino turned out some works which, while
      they carry the foreign stamp of Giorgione, Titian, Pordenone,
      or other great contemporaries, nevertheless show considerable
      freshness of conception and treatment." His altar-piece, of
      1494, in the church of Osopo, shows the influence of Cima da
      Conegliano. From 1504 to 1512 he was frequently at Ferrara
      working for the Duke Alfonso. In 1519-1521 he painted a part
      of the choir of S. Antonio at S. Daniele (the earlier part
      was painted in 1497); in this, his best work, he appears as
      an imitator not only of Pordenone but of Romanino. In 1526 he
      went, apparently for the first time, to Venice, there to buy
      colours for a large picture which he had engaged to paint for
      the church of Cividale: that picture shows his study of Palma.
      Pellegrino combined with painting the business of a timber
      merchant. "That so mediocre a painter as Pellegrino should have
      attained high honour in Friuli need," says Morelli, "surprise
      no one who knows the other painters of that little country.
      The value of anything in the world is comparative. The Friulan
      race never manifested the same talent for art as, for instance,
      their neighbours of Treviso."

On the right of the throne is St. James, with his hand on the shoulder
of the donor of the picture; on the left St. George, with the dead
dragon at his horse's feet.


779, 780. FAMILY PORTRAITS.[182]

  _Borgognone_ (Lombard: about 1455-1523). _See 298._
  _See also_ (p. xx)

On the left (779) a group of nine men, above them a hand, probably
of some patron saint; on the right (780) a group of thirteen women,
kneeling (apparently) by the side of a tomb--studies of character
drawing. These pictures are painted on silk (now attached to wood),
and were originally part of a standard. Mr. Pater says of Borgognone
that "a northern temper is a marked element of his genius--something of
the _patience_, especially, of the masters of Dijon or Bruges, nowhere
more clearly [seen] than in the two groups of male and female heads
in the National Gallery, family groups, painted in the attitude of
worship, with a lowly religious sincerity which may remind us of the
contemporary work of M. Legros. Like those northern masters, he accepts
piously, but can refine, what 'has no comeliness'" ("Art Notes in North
Italy," in the _New Review_, November 1890).


781. RAPHAEL AND TOBIAS.

  _Florentine School_ (15th century).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

The Hebrew legend of Tobit and his son Tobias (told in the Book of
Tobit in the Apocrypha) was a favourite one with the Mediæval Church,
and became therefore a traditional subject for painting; see _e.g._
in the National Gallery, 288, 72, and 48. Tobit, a Jewish exile,
having fallen also into poverty, and afterwards becoming blind, prays
for death rather than life in noble despair. "To him the angel of
all beautiful life (Raphael) is sent, hidden in simplicity of human
duty, taking a servant's place for hire, to lead his son in all right
and happy ways of life" (_Fors Clavigera_, 1877, p. 31). Here we see
Raphael leading the young Tobias into Media, where he was to marry
Sara, his rich kinswoman, the daughter of Raguel. But she was haunted
by an evil spirit, who had slain her seven husbands, each on their
wedding-day, and the angel bade Tobias take the gall of a certain fish,
wherewith afterwards to heal his father's blindness, and its heart and
liver wherewith to drive away the evil spirit from his bride. Tobias is
carrying the fish, Raphael has a small box for the gall. The "rising
step" and the "springy motion in his gait" are characteristic of him
who was the messenger of heaven, the kindly companion of humanity--

    Raphael, the sociable spirit, that deigned
    To travel with Tobias, and secured
    His marriage with the seven times wedded maid.

  MILTON: _Paradise Lost_, v. 221.

For the authorship of this picture, see under 296. "This picture," says
a critic who gives both to Verrocchio, "may possibly be not entirely
from his hand, but there is no doubt that it is essentially his,
and that to his fancy for painting boyhood and opening youth we owe
that curious misreading of the story of Tobias, representing him as
a young lad instead of a grown man, which is to be found through all
the numerous Florentine picture of him by the school of Botticelli, by
Piero di Cosimo and the rest" (_Times_, October 26, 1888).


782. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Botticelli_ (Florentine: 1447-1510). _See under 1034._
  _See also_ (p. xx)

Probably only a "school picture." Most of the old masters kept schools,
or shops, in which several pupils served as apprentices and worked at
pictures under the master's directions. The sale of such pictures under
the master's name was (and is) a very common occurrence, and even in
those days forged signatures were not unusual.


783. THE EXHUMATION OF BISHOP HUBERT.

  _Unknown_ (Early Flemish: 15th century).

      This beautiful work was formerly in the collection of Mr.
      Beckford at Fonthill, where it was described as the Burial of a
      Bishop by Jan Van Eyck. It has also been ascribed to Gerard Van
      der Meire (see 1078) and to Thierri Bouts (about 1420-1475).
      This latter painter--called by early authors Thierry, or Dierik
      of Haarlem, from the name of his native town, and by modern
      writers Thierri Stuerbout,--was town's painter of Louvain, and
      a pupil probably of Roger van der Weyden. His principal works
      are now in the Brussels Museum. Other pictures in the Gallery
      attributed to him by some critics are 664, 774, and 943. Van
      der Meire, Justus of Ghent, and Albert Van Ouwater have also
      been suggested as the painters of this picture; it closely
      resembles the "Raising of Lazarus" ascribed to the last-named
      painter in the Berlin Gallery.

St. Hubert was originally a nobleman of Aquitaine, much addicted to
all worldly pleasures, and especially to that of the chase. But one
day in Holy Week, when all good Christians were at their devotions, as
he was hunting in the forest of Ardennes, he encountered a milk-white
stag bearing the crucifix between his horns. Filled with awe and
astonishment, he renounced the pomps and vanities of the world, turned
hermit in that very forest of Ardennes, was ordained, and became
Bishop of Liège. So the legend runs, embalming, we may suppose, the
conversion of some reckless lover of the chase, like the wild huntsman
of the German legend. And at Liège he was buried, but thirteen years
afterwards his body was disinterred, and lo! it was found entire; even
the episcopal robes in which he had been interred were without spot or
stain. A century later the body was removed from Liège and reinterred
in the abbey church of the Benedictine monks of Ardennes. The Emperor
Louis le Débonnaire assisted at the translation of the relics, and
the day was long kept as a festival throughout this part of Flanders.
This is the subject of the present picture, of which the scene is laid
in the choir of a beautiful Gothic church. On the altar behind the
principal group stands a shrine, on which is a little figure of St.
Hubert with his hunting-horn. The royal personage assisting represents
Louis le Débonnaire. The picture is of wonderful beauty, finished in
every part (abridged from Mrs. Jameson: _Sacred and Legendary Art_,
pp. 431, 432). Though it is thus an historical picture, the artist
takes the figures from his own time, and the heads, like miniatures
in character and delicacy of expression, are doubtless portraits--the
whole scene being a picture of a Flemish Cathedral on some festival
day. Notice, as a particularly interesting little piece of life, the
man flattening his nose against the screen on the left, with a jeering
expression, as if he "didn't half believe it all." It is a piece of
living grotesque, exactly such as meets one in the sculptured stones
of a mediæval cathedral itself--"peeping round the corner at you and
lurking in secret places, like a monk's joke whispered in church"
(Conway's _Early Flemish Artists_, p. 17).


788. AN ALTAR-PIECE.

  _Carlo Crivelli_ (Venetian: painted 1468-1493). _See_ 602.

This important picture is one of Crivelli's masterpieces and is very
characteristic of his genius and its limitations. The work, it will be
seen, is not so much a picture as a collection of panel pictures built
up into a gorgeous piece of decoration. The panels in the two lower
tiers were painted for the old church of San Domenico, at Ascoli; the
central panel of the Madonna and Child is inscribed with the painter's
name and the date 1476. The church was rebuilt in 1776, and some years
afterwards the picture came into the possession of Cardinal Zelada at
Rome, who added the four upper pictures by the same painter. In 1852
the picture passed to Prince Anatole de Demidoff, at Florence, where it
was put into its present magnificent frame. Crivelli's artistic aim, it
has been said, was the development and perfection of isolated figures
for elaborate altar-pieces of this kind, and those before us are among
the best he ever did: "in them calm dignity, strength of character,
gentleness, and grace, can all be treated by him with perfect success
apart from the disturbing elements of emotion and action." The type of
the Virgin here is very characteristic, with her high-arched eyebrows,
small mouth, and hair tightly drawn back from the forehead. So too
are the hands, with very long fingers, in which affectation borders
on dislocation. Very natural, on the contrary, is the figure of the
infant Christ, "fast asleep with one hand under his head while with the
other he grasps his mother's middle finger--a picture drawn from the
life." The decorative details are characteristic. Note the dolphins
on the base of the throne. The festoons are meant to represent real
offerings of fruit, tied with string and fastened with nails. On one
side of the Virgin is St. Peter, an impressive figure: his costume
shows the use of raised ornaments and imitation gems, which is common
in Crivelli's earlier works, but which he gradually dropped. Beyond St.
Peter is St. John the Baptist in the wilderness: the hard and severe
style of the figure is remarkable. "The landscape in which he stands
should not be passed over, with the stream flowing at his feet and the
tree-stems broken off so as not to interfere with the gold background
which sets off the upper half of the figure." On the other side of the
Virgin is St. Catherine of Alexandria, and beyond her St. Dominic--a
figure "admirable in its expression of piety and humility and in the
personality with which Crivelli has invested it." The half-length
figures in the second tier are St. Francis, with the stigmata; St.
Andrew, with cross and book--a very grand head; St. Stephen, with the
stones of his martyrdom; and St. Thomas Aquinas, with book and the
model of a church. In the top tier are St. Jerome, also carrying the
model of a church; the Archangel Michael, trampling on the dragon and
weighing in a pair of scales a man and a woman who are of light weight;
St. Peter Martyr, with the sword of his martyrdom, and St. Lucy,
carrying a plate with eyes upon it. The reference is to the legend
which relates that in order to discourage the suit of a youth who loved
her for the beauty of her eyes, she plucked them out with her own hands
and sent them to him in a dish. The youth, struck with remorse, became
a Christian, and Lucy's sight was miraculously restored to her.


790. THE ENTOMBMENT OF CHRIST.

  _Michael Angelo_ (Florentine: 1475-1564).

      Michelangelo (commonly anglicised as above) Buonarroti (which
      surname, however, is commonly dropped) is the Titan of Italian
      art. He was the rival of Raphael; and amongst the artists who
      were present at the unveiling of his great statue of David were
      Perugino, Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi, Leonardo da Vinci,
      and Filippino Lippi. He lived through the fall of Rome and
      Florence, and survived into the decadence of Italian art. In
      the many-sidedness of his genius he may be compared to Leonardo
      da Vinci. He was at once painter, sculptor, architect, and man
      of action. The greatness of his work was reflected in that of
      his character. He passed most of his life at Rome, amidst the
      petty intrigues of a debased Court; but he never placed his
      self-respect in jeopardy. Filial duty, too, was one of the
      mainsprings of his life. He lived most sparingly, and sent
      all the money he could save to support his father's family at
      Florence. "Whence they must pray God," he says in one of his
      letters, "that all his works may have good success." He was
      proud, and would brook no insult; and when Pope Julius left
      him with unpaid marbles and workmen on his hands, he mounted
      his horse and rode off to Florence. There are many stories,
      too, of the quiet sarcasm with which he would "reproach men for
      sin." "What does the raised hand denote?" Julius asked of a
      statue of himself. "You are advising the people of Bologna to
      be wise," was Michelangelo's reply. With all this, however, he
      was for the most part above the jealousy of other artists. When
      commissioned to paint the Sixtine Chapel, he urged that Raphael
      would be a more fit person to execute so great a work; and when
      he was appointed architect of St. Peter's he refused to permit
      any material alteration of Bramante's design, though Bramante
      had perpetually intrigued against him. Michelangelo was a poet
      also (his sonnets have been translated by J. A. Symonds), his
      poetry being partly inspired by Vittoria Colonna, widow of the
      Marquis of Pescara, to whom late in life he became attached,
      and whose friendship, until her death in 1547, was the solace
      of his lonely labours.

      It is only in Florence and in Rome that the work of
      Michelangelo can be studied. Our Gallery is fortunate, however,
      in having two easel pictures, which, whether entirely from
      his own hand or not, are eminently characteristic of his
      style. The South Kensington Museum and the Royal Academy each
      possess one example of his sculpture. His drawings are to be
      seen in several English collections, especially in that of the
      University of Oxford. A concise chronological summary may here
      be useful to recall to the reader's recollection the chief
      works of the master. At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed
      for three years to Domenico Ghirlandaio to whom our picture,
      No. 809, was formerly ascribed. He made rapid advance in the
      art of painting, and showed also aptitude for sculpture; so
      that in 1489, before his apprenticeship was out, Domenico
      recommended him to Lorenzo de' Medici, who had founded a school
      of sculpture in the garden of his villa. Here, in the society
      and service of Lorenzo, Michelangelo remained for four years.
      Lorenzo's unworthy successor Piero employed the young artist
      only on unworthy commissions, setting him on one occasion, it
      is said, to make a statue of snow; a tradition which inspires a
      noble passage in Ruskin's _Political Economy of Art_, as also
      in Mrs. Browning's _Casa Guidi Windows_. In 1493 Michelangelo
      removed to Bologna, returning in the next year to Florence,
      where he produced a "Sleeping Cupid," which was sold in Rome
      as a veritable antique. This induced him, in 1496, to try his
      fortune in the Papal capital. To this period belong his statue
      of "Cupid," now at South Kensington, the "Bacchus" in the
      Bargello at Florence, and the noble "Pietà" in St. Peter's at
      Rome. By these works he attained the position of the greatest
      sculptor in Italy, and on his return to Florence in 1501 he
      executed the colossal statue of "David," now in the Accademia.
      Works of about the same time are the round marble relief in the
      possession of the Royal Academy, and our picture No. 809. The
      circular "Madonna and Child," now in the Uffizi, belongs to
      1504. In the same year he received a commission to paint one
      wall of the Palazzo Vecchio. The painting was never executed;
      but Michelangelo's cartoon for it,--known as the "Cartoon
      of Pisa"--excited great admiration for its treatment of the
      human figure. In 1505 began Michelangelo's stormy relations
      with the imperious Pope, Julius II. For two years he was
      employed on a great bronze statue of the Pontiff, which was
      afterwards cast as a cannon and used against the Pope by the
      Bolognese. In 1508, being then thirty-three, Michelangelo was
      commissioned by Julius to paint the ceiling of the Sixtine
      Chapel. In this great work, which was finished on November 1,
      1512, the artist set forth, in the vehicle of the human form,
      his conception of the creation, and the early history of the
      world, with reference to man's final redemption and salvation.
      The frescoes have in our time been admirably photographed, and
      the figures of the Prophets and Sibyls, who sit enthroned in
      niches round the vault, are very widely known. The paintings
      caused Michelangelo to suspend his labour on the mausoleum
      of Julius--a work which gave him an infinity of labour and
      vexation, and which was never finished. The great figure of
      "Moses," now in S. Pietro in Vincoli, and the "Captives," in
      the Louvre, were designed for this monument. During the nine
      years' pontificate of Leo X. (1513-22), Michelangelo was mostly
      employed in the unworthy occupation of procuring marble from
      the quarries of Pietra Santa for the façade of the church
      of San Lorenzo at Florence. The short reign of Adrian VI.
      succeeded, and Michelangelo went on working for a time at the
      monument to Julius. He was also employed on the works of the
      Medici Chapel at Florence. In 1523 when Clement VII. succeeded,
      the artist was put to various architectural works. Stormy years
      followed, and Michelangelo quitted the Medici statues to defend
      his native city. He was appointed director of fortifications,
      and was entrusted also with diplomatic missions. When in 1530
      Florence was treacherously yielded to the Medici, Michelangelo
      lay for some time in concealment. Clement, however, gave him
      his pardon, and ordered him to resume work on the Medici
      chapel in San Lorenzo. He worked, as he says, with "morbid
      haste" but saddened heart, and thus were completed his most
      impressive productions in sculpture--the four great recumbent
      figures for the tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici. In
      1534 Clement died. Michelangelo flung down his mallet, and
      set foot in Florence no more. But "a new Eurystheus arose for
      our Hercules." The artist hoped to complete the mausoleum of
      Julius. But the new Pope, Paul III., set him to work upon
      the fresco of the Last Judgment, on the altar wall of the
      Sixtine Chapel. In this mighty work, containing 314 figures,
      which occupied him from 1534 to 1542, the painter "devoted
      his terrible genius to a subject worthy of the times in which
      he lived." Since he had first listened, while a youth, to the
      prophecies of Savonarola, the woes announced in that apocalypse
      had all come true. To Michelangelo, Christ came as an avenger,
      vindictive and implacable, and the lost souls fall before his
      wrath in every contortion of nudity. After the painting of
      the "Last Judgment," one more great labour was reserved for
      Michelangelo. He was called upon to succeed Antonio da San
      Gallo as architect of St. Peter's, a post which he continued to
      hold under succeeding Popes until his death. "The dome of St.
      Peter's, as seen from Tivoli or the Alban hills, like a cloud
      upon the Campagna, is his; but he has no share in the façade
      which screens it from the Piazza." His last poem declared the
      vanity of the art which was his glory, and his dying words to
      his household were these; "In your passage through this life
      remember the sufferings of Jesus Christ." His body was taken,
      as he had desired, to Florence, and he lies in Santa Croce.

      To the artistic genius of Michelangelo, a few out of
      innumerable tributes may here be mentioned. Raphael "thanked
      God that he was born in the days of Michelangelo," and Sir
      Joshua Reynolds says, in his _Discourses_, that "to kiss the
      hem of his garment, to catch the slightest of his perfections,
      would be glory and distinction enough for an ambitious man."
      His knowledge of the human body and his power of representing
      it were supreme. "If a combination of the most exquisite
      finish in drawing and modelling which allows the work to
      bear the closest inspection in its details, with the utmost
      simplicity, breadth, and clearness of effect in a distant
      view, constitute, as I believe they do, the elements of perfect
      work, I must assert positively," says Sir Edward Poynter,
      "that Michelangelo is the most perfect of workmen." This
      workmanship was employed with consummate dramatic effect.
      "He considered figures the highest means of telling a story;
      he concentrated his powers on the single important point of
      expression, so that he had no need of accessories to help him
      out with his story" (_Lectures on Art_). But above all the
      work of Michelangelo was the expression of "a vast imaginative
      gift, the stormy poetry of his mind." His works, says Ruskin,
      "have borne and in themselves retain and exercise the same
      inexplicable power--inexplicable because proceeding from an
      imaginative perception almost superhuman, which goes whither
      we cannot follow, and is where we cannot come; throwing naked
      the final, deepest root of the being of man, whereby he grows
      out of the invisible, and holds on his God home" (_Modern
      Painters_, vol. ii. "Of Imagination Penetrative"). "About the
      qualities of his genius," says Symonds, "opinions may and will,
      and ought to differ. It is so pronounced, so peculiar, so
      repulsive to one man, so attractive to another, that, like his
      own dread statue of Lorenzo de' Medici, 'it fascinates and is
      intolerable.' There are few, I take it, who can feel at home
      with him in all the length and breadth and dark depths of the
      regions that he traversed. The world of thought and forms in
      which he lived habitually is too arid, like an extinct planet,
      tenanted by mighty elemental beings with little human left to
      them, but visionary Titan-shapes, too vast and void for common
      minds to dwell in pleasurably. The sweetness that emerges
      from his strength, the beauty which blooms rarely, strangely,
      in unhomely wise, upon the awful crowd of his conceptions,
      are only to be apprehended by some innate sympathy or by
      long incubation of the brooding intellect. It is probable,
      therefore, that the deathless artist through long centuries of
      glory will abide as solitary as the simple old man did in his
      poor house at Rome" (_Life of Michelangelo_, ii. 373). On his
      successors the influence of Michelangelo was not happy. They
      could imitate his mannerisms, but not his manner. They had not
      his imagination, but they could copy the violent attitudes in
      which he clothed his Titanic thoughts. The anatomical studies
      which with him were the groundwork for his imagination to build
      upon became in their hands the final object of their art.
      (Among those who have been alternately fascinated and repelled
      by Michelangelo was Ruskin. His case against Michelangelo
      is contained in the pamphlet entitled _The Relation between
      Michael Angelo and Tintoret_. But some of Ruskin's critics
      forget that the pamphlet was meant to be read in conjunction
      with his own earlier praise in _Modern Painters_, and with
      Mr. Tyrwhitt's appreciation in _Christian Art and Symbolism_.
      "These lectures," said Ruskin, in his preface to that book,
      "show throughout the most beautiful and just reverence for
      Michael Angelo, and are of especial value in their account
      of him; while the last lecture on sculpture, which I gave at
      Oxford, is entirely devoted to examining the modes in which
      his genius itself failed, and perverted that of other men. But
      Michael Angelo is great enough to make praise and blame alike
      necessary, and alike inadequate").

One of the many unfinished works, which, as Vasari tells us,
Michelangelo left behind him in painting as in sculpture. Its history
is interesting. It was formerly in the gallery of Cardinal Fesch,
which was sold and dispersed after his death. From its unfinished
state and neglected condition it attracted little attention, and was
bought literally "dirt cheap" by Mr. Macpherson, an English gentleman
established as a photographer in Rome. After the dirt upon its face had
been removed, it was submitted to competent judges, who unhesitatingly
pronounced it to be the work of Michelangelo. The discovery caused
a great sensation. A law-suit was instituted against Mr. Macpherson
for the recovery of the picture, which was sequestrated pending the
decision of the Roman courts. After some years he obtained a judgment
in his favour, removed the picture to England, and sold it to the
National Gallery for £2000. Peter von Cornelius, the eminent German
painter, in evidence in the law-suit declared it to be "una cosa
preziosa--un vero originale di Michelangelo."[183]

However this may be, the picture is entirely characteristic of the
school of Michelangelo. What we notice in it most is not the features
of the Maries, but the rendering of the corpse, in all its flaccid
limbs and muscles:--

      "Take the heads from a painting of Angelico,--very little but
      drapery will be left;--drapery made redundant in quantity and
      rigid in fold, that it may conceal the forms, and give a proud
      or ascetic reserve to the actions of the bodily frame. Bellini
      and his school, indeed, rejected at once the false theory
      and the easy mannerism of such religious design, and painted
      the body without fear or reserve, as, in its subordination,
      honourable and lovely. But the inner heart and fire of it are
      by them always first thought of, and no action is given to
      it merely to show its beauty. Whereas the great culminating
      masters, and chiefly of these, Tintoret, Correggio, and Michael
      Angelo, delight in the body for its own sake, and cast it into
      every conceivable attitude, often in violation of all natural
      probability, that they may exhibit the action of its skeleton
      and the contours of its flesh. Correggio and Tintoret learn the
      body from the living body, and delight in its breath, colour,
      and motion. Michael Angelo learned it essentially from the
      corpse, and had great pride in showing that he knew all its
      mechanism. The simplicity of the old religious art was rejected
      not because it was false, but because it was easy; and the dead
      Christ was thought of only as an available subject for the
      display of anatomy" (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch.
      iv.; _Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret, passim_).

The ideal of the painter has in fact changed. The picture is in its
essence not a devotional work: it is a study in the dead nude.


794. A DUTCH COURTYARD.

  _Pieter de Hooch_ (Dutch: 1630-about 1677).

      Hooch (or Hooghe)--"the indoor Cuyp," as he has been called,
      and "one of the glories of the Dutch School--is also one of
      the glories of England," for it was here that his great merits
      were first discovered, and that three-fourths of his pictures
      are now preserved. "There are," says Ruskin (_Modern Painters_,
      vol. v. pt. ix. ch. viii. § 11), whilst tracing the general
      insensitiveness of the Dutch School, "deeper elements in De
      Hooghe, sometimes expressed with superb quiet painting." He
      chose the simplest subjects and used apparently the simplest
      means. But his figures are always placed with the utmost
      skill, and the details, so carefully wrought, are all made
      contributory to the general idea of the picture. In producing
      an effect of serenity, Hooch is unsurpassed. Of his life
      nothing is known except that he was at Delft 1653-56, and that
      afterwards he resided at Amsterdam. In his own country, a fine
      picture by him so late as 1765 brought only 450 florins. In
      1817 it fetched 4000 florins, whilst in 1876 the Berlin Gallery
      paid £6000 for one of his pictures. At the Secrétan Sale in
      1889 an "interior" by De Hooch fetched £11,040. The present
      picture was bought in Paris in 1869 for £1722. No. 834 fetched
      in 1804, £220; No. 835, in 1810, £187.

The whole picture, in its cheerful colour and dainty neatness, seems
to reflect the light of a peaceful and happy home, in which everything
is done decently and in order. They are no rolling stones, these Dutch
burghers, but stay-at-home folk, whose pride is in the trimness of
their surroundings. Every day, one thinks, the good housewife will thus
look to see that the dinner is duly prepared; every day the husband
will thus walk along the garden, sure of her happy greeting. The
picture is signed, and dated 1665.


796. A VASE OF FLOWERS.

  _Jan van Huysum_ (Dutch: 1682-1749).

      Jan was the son and pupil of Justus van Huysum, a painter
      of Amsterdam. By close study Jan attained great fame as a
      flower-painter. The principal florists of Holland supplied him
      with their choicest productions as subjects, and his reputation
      soon spread throughout Europe. "Whilst still young he became
      rich and honoured, and reached the summit of fortune. The
      prices noted in the sale catalogues of the eighteenth century,
      which are altogether out of proportion to those realised by
      other works, reveal to us with what infatuation this finished
      master, so delicate, erudite, and careful, was regarded"
      (Havard: _The Dutch School_, p. 264). He usually arranged his
      flowers in elegant vases, of which he finished the ornaments
      in the most careful manner. He was fond also of introducing a
      bird's nest with eggs. Both of these characteristics may be
      seen in the picture before us. The care with which he rendered
      every detail is remarkable. "As to you, dear old Jan Van
      Huysum," writes an artist of our own day, "you have edified me
      beyond expression. You teach me that a man can't be too careful
      as to his work, be it what it may. Your pearly dewdrops on
      the fresh gathered green things of the earth refresh me. Your
      tiny ants on the petals of the pink teach me in their minute
      contemplation to be like the star, _Ohne Hast, Ohne Rast_. How
      cool, and calm, and cheerful, and confident you are, Jan!"
      (_Letters of James Smetham_, p. 173). "The world is so old,"
      says Ruskin, "that there is no dearth of things first-rate; and
      life so short that there is no excuse for looking at things
      second-rate. Let us then go to Rubens for blending, and to
      Titian for quality, of colour; to Veronese for daylight, and
      Rembrandt for lamplight; to Buonarroti for awfulness, and to
      Van Huysum for precision. Any man is worthy of respect, in his
      own rank, who has pursued any truth or attainment with all his
      heart and strength" (Letter to Liddell in the _Memoir_ of the
      Dean, by H. L. Thompson, p. 224). Other pictures by Jan Van
      Huysum may be seen in the Wallace Collection and the Dulwich
      Gallery.

Signed, and dated 1736-1737. Notice the bird's nest, with the
greenfinch's eggs.


797. A MAN'S PORTRAIT.

  _Cuyp_ (Dutch: 1620-1691). _See 53._

This excellent portrait serves to remind us that, unlike most of his
fellow landscape painters, Cuyp could paint his own figures. Indeed
we have seen that he sometimes painted them in other landscapes, see
No. 152. The picture is signed "Aetatis suae 56, 1649. A. Cuyp fecit."
Cuyp is one of the most various of all the Dutch masters. "What
universality in the hand that could paint skies more glowing than
those of Both, clouds as vaporous as those of Van de Cappelle, water
more luminous than Van de Velde's, cattle as true to nature as Paul
Potter's, horses better than Wouverman's, horsemen more distinguished
than Vandyck's! Sometimes, too--and there is a noble example in our
National Gallery--we find Aelbert Cuyp painting portraits, not in the
stiff precise way that the father painted them, but with a freedom of
touch and a brilliancy of colour that place him between Van der Helst
and Rembrandt" (_Quarterly Review_, October 1891, and Fromentin's' _Les
Maitres d'autrefois_, "Hollande," ch. viii.).


798. CARDINAL RICHELIEU.

  _Philippe de Champaigne_ (French: 1602-1674).

      A painter of historical subjects and portraits, he was born at
      Brussels, but went to Paris at the age of 19. He was employed
      by Du Chesne, the painter royal, to work at the Luxembourg in
      concert with Nicolas Poussin. Du Chesne was of mediocre talent
      and jealous disposition, and Champaigne and Poussin soon left
      him. The two men were mutually attached, and in after years
      Champaigne discoursed at a session of the Academy on the merits
      of his friend Poussin. Champaigne returned to Brussels, but was
      recalled in 1627 to succeed Du Chesne. He executed many works
      for the churches and royal residences and also for Cardinal
      Richelieu's palace. He became an original member of the French
      Academy in 1648, of which he was also Professor and Rector.
      Towards the end of his life, his fame began to pale before
      that of Le Brun. His religious and historical works, of which
      there are several in the Louvre, are apt to leave the modern
      spectator cold; but his portraits are excellent.

This picture was painted for the Roman sculptor Mocchi to make a bust
from, hence the two profiles as well as the full face. Over the profile
on the right are the words (in French), "of the two profiles this is
the better." In this profile the compressed lips, the merciless eyes,
the iron-gray hair and prominent nose, bespeak the great Cardinal
Minister of Louis XIII., and the maker of France, who summed up his
policy and his character in the words, "I venture on nothing without
first thinking it out; but once decided, I go straight to my point,
overthrow or cut down whatever stands in my way, and finally cover it
all up with my cardinal's red robes." In the full face one sees rather
the man who was also a princely patron of the arts and artists (of
De Champaigne amongst their number), and the founder of the French
Academy.[184] The central head here was clearly used as a study for the
full-length portrait, No. 1449.


802. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Bartolommeo Montagna_ (Venetian: about 1450-1523).

      Montagna was born near Brescia, and worked at Vicenza, but must
      have studied at Venice.[185] "He is entitled," says Kugler,
      "to a much higher place among the painters of the last part of
      the fifteenth century than that hitherto accorded to him. His
      art is distinct in character, with a firm outline and a bold,
      sure hand; his colour is low but rich, bright, and gem-like. He
      gives a grand, dignified expression and pose to his figures;
      his draperies are generally arranged in broad folds, and his
      landscape backgrounds, although minute, frequently denote
      an original and poetical fancy." His best work is the great
      altar-piece now in the Brera at Milan, a picture worthy to
      rank with those of the same kind by Bellini and Carpaccio.
      Other important works by Montagna are in the Public Gallery of
      Bergamo, in the Museo Civico at Vicenza, and in the Pilgrimage
      Church on Monte Berico, near Vicenza.

This picture is ascribed by some critics to Giovanni Speranza, a
painter of Vicenza contemporary with Montagna.


803. THE CIRCUMCISION OF CHRIST.

  _Marco Marziale_ (Venetian: painted 1499-1507).

      Marco was one of the assistants engaged to work under Giovanni
      Bellini in the decoration of the Ducal Palace. Whilst Bellini
      received sixty ducats a year, Marco received only twenty-four.
      Nothing else is known about his career. Of his works, which are
      very rare, the best are in our Gallery.

An example which shows what wealth of interest there is in the National
Collection. It is only by a second-rate painter of the Venetian school;
but no picture in the Gallery is richer than this in decorative design.
Note first the varied and beautifully-designed patterns in the mosaics
of the church--recalling one of the domes of St. Mark's. Then the
lectern, covered with a cloth, and the delicately-embroidered border,
wrought in sampler stitch, deserve close examination. The cushion
above this, and the tassels, formed of three pendent tufts of silk
hung on to a gold embroidered ball, offer good decorative suggestions
to the trimming manufacturer. Attached to the front of the lectern
is a label or "cartellino," setting forth that "Marco Marziale the
Venetian, by command of that magnificent knight and jurisconsult,
the learned Thomaseo R., made this picture in the year 1500." As it
is probable that this was the first important commission Marco ever
obtained on his own account, there is little wonder that he wrought
the record so elaborately. This "Thomaseo R." was Raimondi, a knight
of the order of Jerusalem--a man of considerable note in Cremona as a
lawyer and poet. His portrait occupies the forefront of the right-hand
corner of the picture, his set features recalling the lawyer rather
than the poet. It is his mantle, however, which best repays notice--a
sumptuous robe of raised red velvet, such a fabric as Venice was then
winning industrial renown by weaving. The very pretty pattern is of
the so-called "pomegranate form," and occurs also on the mantle of the
donor's wife, who occupies a corresponding position on the left-hand
side of the picture. In the South Kensington Museum there is a remnant
of Italian silk brocade of this pattern (in the Bock collection). The
robe of the High Priest is also evidently taken by the painter from
a silk robe, and is very rich. The design, in which the wild pink is
largely introduced, is unique. Ruskin had a wall-paper made for him in
1872 copied from this robe: it has ever since been used for the walls
of the drawing-room and study at Brantwood. "It will thus be seen that
this one picture brings before us a great number of suggestions in
design for various technic arts; at least half a dozen patterns exist
in the ornaments of the mosaic work of the vaults; five or six patterns
of embroidered or woven borders will be found in it, as many designs
for diapered or other surface decoration, examples of beaten metal-work
and of bookbinding, besides the carved wood lectern." For notice of
other points, see further the interesting article by G. T. Robinson in
the _Art Journal_, June 1886, and cp. Vacher's _Italian Ornament_, No.
24.


804. MADONNA AND CHILD ENTHRONED.

  _Marco Marziale_ (Venetian: painted 1499-1507). _See 803._

This picture was painted seven years later (1507) than 803, which it
resembles in the bright mosaics of the vault and the interesting
design on the robe of the bishop on the left. Notice the little angel
playing the mandoline on the steps of the throne, characteristic of the
earlier Venetian painters.


805. PEELING PEARS.

  _Teniers_ (Flemish: 1600-1694). _See 154._


806. THE PROCESSION TO CALVARY.

  _Boccaccio Boccaccino_ (Cremonese: about 1460-1525).

      Boccaccino was a native of Cremona, where many of his works are
      still preserved. "All that is best in his art," says Morelli,
      "he derived from the school of the Bellini." In the Venetian
      Academy is a beautiful "mystic marriage of St. Catherine"
      which is signed by him. He is a painter, says Kugler, "of very
      distinct individuality, and may be easily recognised by the
      peculiar type and expression of his figures, and especially by
      his women, who generally have much grace and beauty. One of
      his characteristics is a light-grey eye with a dark rim." This
      picture is "not characteristic of Boccaccino's manner, and is
      probably by another hand" (ii. 389).

For some remarks on the subject of this picture see under 1143.


807. MADONNA AND CHILD ENTHRONED.

  _Carlo Crivelli_ (Venetian: painted 1468-1493). _See 602._

This picture (like 724) is signed by "_Sir_ Charles": it is dated
1491. It bears the painter's sign-manual also in the fruits and the
vase of flowers. The giver of the picture (which was dedicated to the
Virgin, and which, as recorded in a Latin inscription below, cost no
inconsiderable sum) is kneeling, in the habit of a Dominican nun, at
the foot of the throne. On the Madonna's left is St. Sebastian, pierced
with arrows and tied to a pillar, but with the happy look of "sorrow
ended" on his face. On her right is St. Francis. Near his feet are
some flowers and a snail--typical of the kindness and humbleness of
the saint, of whom it is recorded that "he spoke never to bird nor to
cicala, nor even to wolf and beast of prey, but as his brother," and
who thus taught the lesson "Never to blend our pleasure, or our pride,
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels" (_Wordsworth_).


808. ST. PETER MARTYR.

  _Giovanni Bellini_[186] (Venetian: 1426-1516). _See 189._
  _See also_ (p. xx)

A fancy portrait of a jolly comfortable-looking Dominican monk--a
faithful portrait doubtless. His face is painted as it really was,
"wart and all," but it has pleased him to be represented in the
character of Peter, a famous member of his order (see under 812).


809. THE HOLY FAMILY.

  _Michael Angelo_ (Florentine: 1475-1564). _See 790._

The Virgin mother is seen withholding from the child Saviour the
prophetic writings in which His sufferings are foretold. Angelic
figures beside them examine a scroll--

    Turn not the prophet's page, O Son! He knew
      All that Thou hast to suffer and hath writ.
      Not yet Thine hour of knowledge. Infinite
    The sorrows that thy manhood's lot must rue
    And dire acquaintance of Thy grief. That clue
      The spirits of Thy mournful ministerings,
      Seek through yon scroll in silence. For these things
    The angels have desired to look into.

    Still before Eden waves the fiery sword,--
      Her Tree of Life unransomed: whose sad tree
      Of Knowledge yet to growth of Calvary
      Must yield its Tempter,--Hell the earliest dead
    Of Earth resign,--and yet, O Son and Lord,
      The Seed o' the woman bruise the serpent's head.

  D. G. ROSSETTI: _Sonnets and Ballads_.[187]

This picture was at one time attributed to Domenico Ghirlandajo; and
Signor Frizzoni now attributes it to Granacci. But, says Sir Edward
Poynter, "the beauty of the figures, the nobility of the heads, and
the fine qualities of drawing and modelling stamp it as the work of
the great master himself." "In my judgment," says Symonds (_Life of
Michelangelo Buonarroti_, i. 65), "this is the most beautiful of the
easel pictures attributed to Michelangelo.... Florentine painters had
been wont to place attendant angels at both sides of their enthroned
Madonnas. But their angels were winged and clothed like acolytes;
the Madonna was seated on a rich throne or under a canopy, with
altar-candles, wreaths of roses, flowering lilies. It is characteristic
of Michelangelo to adopt a conventional motive, and to treat it with
brusque originality. In this picture there are no accessories to the
figures, and the attendant angels are Tuscan lads half draped in
succinct tunics. The types have not been chosen with regard to ideal
loveliness or dignity, but accurately studied from living models. This
is very obvious in the heads of Christ and St. John. The two adolescent
genii on the right hand possess a high degree of natural grace. Yet
even here what strikes one most is the charm of their attitude, the
lovely interlacing of their arms and breasts, the lithe alertness of
the one lad contrasted with the thoughtful leaning languor of his
comrade. Only perhaps in some drawings of combined male figures made
by Ingres, for his picture of the 'Golden Age,' have lines of equal
dignity and simple beauty been developed."


810. PARDON DAY IN BRITTANY.

  _Charles Poussin_ (French: born 1819).

      M. Pierre Charles Poussin, a pupil of L. Cogniet, was an
      exhibitor at the French _Salon_ from 1842 to 1882. Many of his
      pictures were, like this one, of scenes in Brittany.

The scene is that of a fête held in honour of _Notre Dame de Bon
Secours_ of Guingamp in Brittany, on the 2nd of July in every year.
Pope Paul V. in 1619 granted a plenary indulgence to all persons "who
truly confessed and communicated, who shall visit the said church of
Notre Dame de Guingamp on the day and fête of the Visitation of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, which it is the custom every year to celebrate on
the 2nd day of July; who shall devotionally pray for the preservation
of concord and peace among all Christian princes; who shall render
hospitality to the poor pilgrims; who shall make peace with their
enemies, and shall promote it amongst others--shall, in short, sweetly
bring into the way of salvation some unfortunate and erring soul." An
English visitor published a long account of the fête in the _Standard_
of July 5 and following days in 1870, describing "the frank but sedate
festivity and merry-making under the trees." That was twenty years
after this picture was painted.


811. TOBIAS AND THE ANGEL.

  _Salvator Rosa_ (Neapolitan: 1615-1673). _See under 84._

For the subject of Tobias, who is in the water holding the fish,
see 781. The wild rocky landscape conveys a general sense of savage
power. Salvator, says Ruskin, is "a good instance of vicious
execution, dependent on too great fondness for sensations of power,
vicious because intrusive and attractive in itself, instead of being
subordinate to the results and forgotten in them" (_Modern Painters_,
vol. i. pt. i. sec. ii. ch. ii. § 9).


812. THE DEATH OF ST. PETER MARTYR.

  _Giovanni Bellini_[188] (Venetian: 1426-1516). _See 189._

      "Peter Martyr was general of the Dominicans in 1252, a most
      powerful person in the Holy Inquisition, and a violent
      persecutor for what he deemed the true faith, which made him
      many inveterate enemies. There was one family in particular
      which he had treated with excessive cruelty, and their
      relations, who were in the army, were so enraged by Peter's
      barbarity that they resolved to revenge themselves.... Having
      been informed that he was to make a visit to a distant province
      in pursuit of some wretched heretics, who had been denounced to
      the inquisition, they lay in wait for him in a wood, through
      which they knew he must pass, in company with one person, a
      friar of his convent; here they attacked him, cleft his skull
      with a sabre, and left him dead on the spot" (Mrs. Jameson;
      _Handbook to the Public Galleries_, 1842, i. 70).

This picture, one of the painter's latest works, is interesting, first,
for its skill in landscape. It is a true piece of local scenery that
Bellini paints,--"all Italian in masses of intricate wood and foliage,
in plain, mountain, and buildings, and glowing, not under direct
sunshine, but with the soft suffusion of southern light" (_Layard_,
i. 312). It is, says Ruskin, one of the six most beautiful landscapes
in the earlier mediæval art, of the "purist" school, "being wholly
felicitous and enjoyable." Every leaf is painted with loving care, and
Bellini treats the incident in the foreground as "entirely cheerful
and pleasing; it does not disturb or even surprise him, much less
displease in the slightest degree." "You see in a moment the main
characteristic of the school,--that it mattered not in the least to
John, and that he doesn't expect it to matter to you, whether people
are martyred or not, so long as one can make a pretty grey of their
gown, and a nice white of their sleeves, and infinite decoration
of forest leaves behind, and a divine picture at last out of all.
Everything in the world was done and made only that it might be rightly
painted--that is the true master's creed" (_Verona and its Rivers_, §
27, and _Lectures on Landscape_, pp. 22, 65, 73).[189] Notice, further,
Bellini's compliance, as far as the subject admitted, with one of the
conditions of the greatest art, "serenity in state or action." "You
are to be interested in the living creatures; not in what is happening
to them.... It is not possible, of course, always literally to observe
this condition, that there shall be quiet action or none; but Bellini's
treatment of violence in action you may see exemplified in a notable
way in his "St. Peter Martyr." The soldier is indeed striking the sword
down into his breast; but in the face of the Saint is only resignation
and faintness of death, not pain--that of the executioner is impassive;
and while a painter of the later schools would have covered breast and
sword with blood, Bellini allows no stain of it; but pleases himself
with most elaborate and exquisite painting of a soft crimson feather
in the executioner's helmet" (_Relation between Michael Angelo and
Tintoret_, p. 16).


814. DUTCH BOATS IN A CALM.

  _P. J. Clays_ (Belgian: 1818-1900).

      Paul Jean Clays was a native of Bruges. He studied art in Paris
      under Gudin, and afterwards settled at Brussels, where in 1851
      he received a gold medal. He frequently exhibited at the
      French _Salon_, and was a chevalier of the Legion of Honour as
      well as of the Order of Leopold. For a long time, says a French
      critic, "the sea, or rather the water, has had no interpreter
      more exact than Clays: he knows its clearness, and he knows how
      to render the little noisy waves, all bathed in light." "He
      does not paint the sea," says another, "but the Scheldt where
      it widens, and those gray and light waters that bear you on a
      steamer from Moerdyk to Rotterdam. With a profound feeling for
      these things he expresses the humidity of the skies of Western
      Flanders, the sleep of the calmed waters, or the caressing, and
      sometimes menacing, of the breeze which makes the little uneasy
      waves stride around the barges loaded to the brim." Some of his
      pictures have fetched very large prices--one having sold in New
      York for £3550 (Miss Clement and Laurence Hutton: _Artists of
      the Nineteenth Century_).


815. DUTCH BOATS AT FLUSHING.

  _P. J. Clays_ (Belgian: 1818-1900). _See 814._


816. THE INCREDULITY OF ST. THOMAS.

  _Cima da Conegliano_ (Venetian: 1460-1518). _See 300._

A picture interesting among other things for its history. It is signed
and dated (1504), and was painted as a commission for a religious
fraternity, for the altar of their patron saint, St. Thomas, in the
church of St. Francesco at Portogruario (near Conegliano). The price
paid for it was equal to about £17 sterling, at that time representing
a considerable sum. The account of its cost and of a law-suit
instituted by the painter against the fraternity is still preserved.
For 328 years it remained in its original place; it was then removed
by the local authorities, and in 1870 was sold to our Government.
When bought it "was greatly disfigured by various repaints, and was
otherwise in bad condition. Judicious cleaning and restoration (by Mr.
Wm. Dyer) have brought out its fine qualities. The heads are highly
expressive, and some of the figures ... of great dignity" (_Layard_, i.
325).


817. TENIERS'S COUNTRY-SEAT AT PERCK.

  _Teniers_ (Flemish: 1600-1694). _See 154._

"A perfect type of the Unromantic Art which was assailed by the gentle
enthusiasm of the English School of Landscape. It represents a few
ordinary Dutch houses, an ordinary Dutch steeple or two, some still
more ordinary Dutch trees, and most ordinary Dutch clouds, assembled in
contemplation of an ordinary Dutch duck-pond; or, perhaps, in respect
of size, we may more courteously call it a goose-pond. All these
objects are painted either gray or brown, and the atmosphere is of
the kind which looks not merely as if the sun had disappeared for the
day, but as if he had gone out altogether, and left a stable lantern
instead. The total effect having appeared, even to the painter's own
mind, at last little exhilatory, he has enlivened it by three figures
on the brink of the goose-pond--two gentlemen and a lady,--standing all
three perfectly upright, side by side, in court dress, the gentlemen
with expansive boots, and all with conical hats and high features.
In order to invest those characters with dramatic interest, a rustic
fisherman presents to them, as a tribute,--or, perhaps, exhibits as a
natural curiosity,--a large fish, just elicited from the goose-pond by
his adventurous companions, who have waded into the middle of it, every
one of them, with singular exactitude, up to the calf of his leg" (_Art
of England_, pp. 209, 211). The group on the left comprise the painter
and his wife, another lady, and his son.


818. COAST SCENE.

  _Bakhuizen_ (Dutch: 1631-1708). _See 204._


819. OFF THE MOUTH OF THE THAMES.

  _Bakhuizen_ (Dutch: 1631-1708). _See 204._

On representations of rough weather by this painter and Vandevelde,
Ruskin writes as follows: "If one could but arrest the connoisseurs in
the fact of looking at them with belief, and, magically introducing the
image of a true sea-wave, let it roll up through the room,--one massive
fathom's height and rood's breadth of brine, passing them by but
once,--dividing, Red-Sea like, on right hand and left,--but at least
setting close before their eyes, for once in inevitable truth, what
a sea-wave really is; its green mountainous giddiness of wrath, its
overwhelming crest--heavy as iron, fitful as flame, clashing against
the sky in long cloven edge,--its furrowed flanks all ghastly clear,
deep in transparent death, but all laced across with lurid nets of
spume, and tearing open into meshed interstices their churned veil of
silver fury, showing still the calm gray abyss below; that has no fury
and no voice, but is as a grave always open, which the green sighing
mounds do but hide for an instant as they pass. Would they, shuddering
back from this wave of the true, implacable sea, turn forthwith to the
papillotes? It might be so. It is what we are all doing, more or less,
continually" (_Harbours of England_, p. 19). In default of the actual
sea-wave, the visitor may be recommended to look next at Turner's
rough seas (472 and 476). Such a comparison will show how much of the
roughness in the Dutch pictures is due to mere blackness, how little to
any terror in the forms of the waves, such as Turner depicts.


820. LANDSCAPE WITH RUIN.

  _Berchem_ (Dutch: 1620-1683). _See 78._


821. A FAMILY GROUP.

  _Gonzales Coques_ (Flemish: 1618-1684).

      In spite of his Spanish-sounding name, this artist was a pure
      Fleming. He was born at Antwerp and appears never to have left
      his native town. His father, whose surname was Cocx, gave the
      child the name of Gonzalvus: these names the painter afterwards
      changed to Gonzales Coques. His first master was Peter Breughel
      (the third painter of that name). He afterwards studied under
      David Ryckhaert the Elder, whose daughter he married. His first
      subjects were conversation-pieces and assemblies; but the
      extraordinary reputation acquired by Van Dyck for his portraits
      inspired Coques with the ambition to distinguish himself in
      like manner, although on a smaller scale. There is in the
      little works of Coques the same air of elegance and refinement
      which distinguishes Van Dyck. Hence he has been called "the
      Little Van Dyck." His works, says Bürger, are "Van Dycks seen
      through the wrong side of the glass"; or as another critic puts
      it, "Van Dycks in 18mo." They were greatly admired during his
      lifetime, and he was patronised by Charles I., the Archduke
      Leopold, and the Prince of Orange. His works, however, are very
      rare; about half of them are in this country. He was admitted
      as a master in the Guild of Painters in 1640-41, and twice
      served as its Dean, in 1665-66 and 1680-81.

Notice the youngest child in the go-cart, which is being pushed by
another of the children, whilst the eldest sister, as befits her
years, is playing the guitar. And the little dogs, as befits them,
are sporting in front. It is pretty of the painter or his sitters to
include them in the family group.


822. AN EVENING LANDSCAPE.

  _Cuyp_ (Dutch: 1620-1691). _See 53._

An excellent example of the hazy, drowsy effect in which Cuyp excelled.
"A brewer by trade,[190] he feels the quiet of a summer afternoon, and
his work will make you marvellously drowsy. It is good for nothing
else that I know of; strong, but unhelpful and unthoughtful. Nothing
happens in his pictures, except some indifferent persons asking the way
of somebody else, who, by the cast of countenance, seems not likely to
know it. For further entertainment, perhaps, a red cow and a white one;
or puppies at play, not playfully; the man's heart not going even with
the puppies. Essentially he sees nothing but the shine on the flaps of
their ears" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. chap. vi. § 12).


823. ON THE MEUSE.

  _Cuyp_ (Dutch: 1620-1691). _See 53._

Notice the reflections. Cuyp "is a man of large natural gift, and sees
broadly, nay, even seriously; finds out--a wonderful thing for men to
find out in those days--that there are reflections in the water, and
that boats require often to be painted upside down" (_Modern Painters_,
vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 12).


824. A RUINED CASTLE.

  _Cuyp_ (Dutch: 1620-1691). _See 53._

The castle may be the same as that seen in No. 1289. Some lines from
Beattie's "Scotland" have been applied to it:--

    Behold our lakes ...
    Each girdled with its mountain belt
    Of rock and tower and forest trees,
    And gemmed with island sanctuaries
    Like floating palaces, they seem
    The elysium of a poet's dream.


This picture was originally bought at Horn, in the Netherlands, of an
old clothesman, for 1s. 3d. Sir Robert Peel paid 350 guineas for it.


825. THE POULTERER'S SHOP.

  _Gerard Dou_ (Dutch: 1613-1675). _See 192._

This picture, as an acknowledged _chef d'oeuvre_ of the master, has
long been celebrated. It was purchased by Sir Robert Peel from the
Fonthill Collection in 1823 for £1270. Mrs. Jameson, on seeing the
picture at Sir R. Peel's, wrote: "All executed with such a nicety of
touch--such an inconceivable truth and minuteness of imitation--as to
render the picture a very miracle of art. A higher merit consists in
the admirable painting of the heads, especially that of the old woman,
which is full of life." "A wicker market-basket is a common homely
thing, but look at its presentment here--every polished, well-used
twig of it following the true undulations of form and colour, light
and shade, through the marvellous patience and skill of the vanished
Dutchman--and see if it does not produce an exquisite poetic tremor
by the thoughts it evolves. There is a dead image of the barnyard
cock which Mr. Darwin may compare with the barndoor fowl of to-day as
accurately as if it were photographed. His once fiery eye is glazed
and sightless as a dim pearl, his neck feathers ruffled but no longer
in anger or pride; his pale, amber-coloured legs helplessly and
ingloriously reversed, their impatient and masterful scratching among
his dames in the stubble over for ever; the glossy purples, greens,
and blacks of his tail-feathers rising sharp and delicate out of the
speckled hazes of colour which it required days and days to lay side
by side among the crushed and crowding plumes. The cock, the horologe
of Thorpe's light, crows no more to the answering hill-farms. He is
destined for the spit of the housewife who holds up the hare. But his
fate was glorious, for by what tens of thousands since the year 1650
or thereabouts have his perfections been admired and praised. It was
worth living for, and, to chanticleer, worth dying for, to become the
occasion of such a miracle of art" (Smetham's _Literary Works_, p. 240).


826. FIGURES AND ANIMALS.


827. FORDING THE STREAM.


828. LANDSCAPE WITH CATTLE.

  _Karel du Jardin_ (Dutch: 1622-1678).

      This painter was the ablest of the followers of Nicolas
      Berchem, and like that master often painted Italian scenery. He
      stayed for some years in Rome, where his pictures were greatly
      admired, and where, in the jovial artist circles of the day,
      he was given the nickname of "Barbe de Bouc" (goat's-beard).
      On his return from Italy he is said to have stayed some time
      at Lyons, where he married a widow with whom he afterwards
      settled in Holland. He resided at the Hague from 1656 to 1659,
      and there was much influenced by the example of Paul Potter.
      He next moved to Amsterdam, which he made his home for some
      years. He returned in the end to the Italian haunts of his
      early years, and died at Venice. In his best pastoral works,
      the truth and finish of his execution, the brilliancy of their
      atmosphere, and the harmonious colouring, are attractive. He
      also painted portraits and large groups, and executed some good
      etchings.

It has been said of Du Jardin that his works are "excellent when they
are not detestable," a remark which is well exemplified in these
pictures. No. 827 is at once vulgar in incident and unpleasant in
colour. No. 826, on the other hand, one of the pastoral idyls for which
Du Jardin is famous, is a _chef d'oeuvre_ of the painter (Sir Robert
Peel paid 930 guineas for it). No. 828 has a true Italian air, and
there is a touch of almost pathetic humour in the contrast between the
cow and the woman. It is the beast that has its eyes on the sunset and
enjoys the benediction of the evening hour. The woman is cumbered with
much serving, and spins with her back to the light.


829. A STAG HUNT.

  _Jan Hackaert_ (Dutch: 1629-1696).

      Hackaert was a native of Amsterdam, but between the years
      1653 and 1658 he travelled much in Switzerland, Germany, and
      Italy. At this time he chose his subjects from the mountains.
      In painting the landscape of his own country he especially
      affected woodland views, with effects of light shining through
      the trees.

The figures in this picture are attributed to N. Berchem.


830. THE AVENUE, MIDDELHARNIS.

  _Hobbema_ (Dutch: 1638-1709). _See 685._

Perhaps the best rendering of a Dutch village in the Gallery--beautiful
alike in its general effect and in the faithful way in which every
characteristic of the country is brought out. Note the long avenue,
a High Street, as it were, of lopped trees, to lead the traveller to
the village; the bright red roofs, suggestive already in the distance
of the cheerful cleanliness he will find; the broad ditch on either
side of the road--the land reclaimed from the water, and the water
now embanked to fertilise the land; the neat plantations, allotments
it may be, each as trim and well kept as a lawn; and lastly, the
nursery-garden on the left, in which the gardener, smoking, like
the true Hollander, as he works, is pruning some grafted trees.
Middelharnis is one of several places that dispute the honour of being
Hobbema's birthplace.

This picture--which is signed, and dated 16-9 (third figure
illegible)--is generally recognised as the painter's masterpiece. The
subject is unusual, showing a more open landscape and a wider expanse
of sky than Hobbema ordinarily represented. The power and freshness
with which he has treated the theme are remarkable. "Such daylight,"
says Waagen, "I have never seen in any picture." It is to be noted
further that the artist makes no effort to attain the picturesque,
and that the picture offends in some respects against the laws of
composition. Thus "M. Michel complains of the road coming straight,
at once cutting the picture awkwardly in two, of the slender trees
with which it is symmetrically bordered, and which have on their tops
only small plumes of foliage, of the parallel ditches which hold in
the road on either side, and of the cross-road which cuts the picture
horizontally, and lastly, the rose-trees and shrubs planted regularly
in straight lines. All this, he says, does not make a very picturesque
picture. For our own part, it is the fearless and truthful manner in
which Hobbema has treated what must at first sight have appeared an
unpromising subject, that is one of its greatest charms" (Cundall:
_The Landscape Painters of Holland_, p. 53). Like Hobbema's pictures
generally, this masterpiece was held in little honour in its own
country. It was sold at Dort in 1815 for £90. Sir Robert Peel bought
it in 1829 for £800. It is said to have been restored and retouched
by Reinagle (see Mrs. Jameson's _Handbook to the Private Galleries of
London_, p. 354 _n._).


831. THE RUINS OF BREDERODE CASTLE.

  _Hobbema_ (Dutch: 1638-1709). _See 685._

This fine picture also is somewhat unusual in subject for Hobbema, who
was ordinarily content with humble village scenes. It affords a good
instance of his literal truth to nature. M. Michel, in his monograph
on the painter, gives side by side a reproduction of it and a sketch
from his own pen of the ruins as they exist to-day, which, with the
exception of the addition of a modern barbaric bell-turret and some
battlements, preserve almost the identical appearance which Hobbema
portrayed upwards of two centuries ago. "The ivy continues to entwine
its garlands round the disjointed bricks, and, as formerly, the ducks
sport in the stagnant waters of the moat, or take a luxurious siesta
amidst the tufts of grass on its banks, while the rooks and crows,
installed as masters in the recesses of the ancient walls, fill the
air with their incessant cries" (quoted in Cundall's _Landscape and
Pastoral Painters of Holland_, 1891, p. 52). The ducks[191] are
ascribed to Wyntrank; the figures to Lingelbach. The picture is
signed, and dated 1667. It was, however, at one time re-christened as
a Wijnants, in order to procure a better price at auctions. In 1825 it
sold for £880.


832. A VILLAGE WITH WATERMILLS.

  _Hobbema_ (Dutch: 1638-1709). _See 685._

This is one of Hobbema's most usual subjects--a cottage, a mill, a few
trees. The effect is that of a summer sky, with light fleecy clouds,
and gleams of sunshine seem to pass over the scene. Sir Robert Peel
paid £525 for the picture. It should be compared with Ruysdael's of a
similar scene (986).


833. A FOREST SCENE.

  _Hobbema_ (Dutch: 1638-1709). _See 685._


834. A DUTCH INTERIOR.

  _Pieter de Hooch_ (Dutch: 1630-about 1677). _See 794._

This picture is interesting as enabling us to discern the painter's
technical process. "The more luminous parts of it, such as the costumes
of the two men at the table, are painted in semi-opaque colour over a
brilliant orange ground. Here and there the orange may be seen peeping
out, and its presence elsewhere gives a peculiar pearliness to the
tints laid upon it. De Hooch painted very thinly. In this picture the
maid with the brazier is an afterthought. She is painted over the
tiles and other details of the background, which now show through her
skirts. Before she was put in, this space to the right was occupied by
an old gentleman with a white beard and moustache, and a wide-brimmed
hat, all of which can be descried under the brown of the mantelpiece"
(Armstrong: _Notes on the National Gallery_, pp. 36, 37).


835. COURT OF A DUTCH HOUSE.

  _Pieter de Hooch_ (Dutch: 1630-about 1677). _See 794._

A courtyard at Delft: superbly painted, and a good picture of Dutch
home life--of its neatness, its cleanliness, its quiet, and its
content. Notice over the entrance a commemorative inscription, partly
covered already by vine leaves, dated 1614. The day's work is done,
and the wife stands in the porch, waiting for her husband's return;
a servant brings down the child too into the courtyard to greet its
father. "It is natural to think your own house and garden the nicest
house and garden that ever were.... They are a treasure to you which
no money could buy,--the leaving them is always pain,--the return to
them a new thrill and wakening to life. They are a home and a place of
root to you, as if you were founded on the ground like its walls, or
grew into it like its flowers" (_Fors Clavigera_, 1876, p. 51). Such a
home (says Mr. Pater in his _Imaginary Portraits_) "was, in its minute
and busy wellbeing, like an epitome of Holland itself, with all the
good-fortune of its thriving genius reflected, quite spontaneously, in
the national taste. The nation had learned to content itself with a
religion which told little, or not at all, on the outsides of things.
But we may fancy that something of the religious spirit had gone,
according to the law of the transmutation of force, into the scrupulous
care for cleanliness, into the grave, old-world, conservative beauty
of Dutch houses, which meant that the life people maintained in them
was normally affectionate and pure." This picture was much admired by
Constable. "The least mannered," he said, "and consequently the best
pictures I have seen, are some of the works of De Hooge, particularly
one of an outdoor subject, at Sir R. Peel's. His indoors are as
good, but less difficult, as being less lustrous" (Leslie's _Life of
Constable_, p. 299). The picture is signed, and dated 1658.


836. A VIEW IN HOLLAND.

  _Philip de Koninck_ (Dutch: 1619-1688).

      Koninck, or Koning, was born at Amsterdam and became a pupil of
      Rembrandt. He painted historical subjects and portraits, but it
      is for his landscapes that he is now most admired. These are
      generally expansive views in which aerial perspective is well
      given: "The distances of the painters of the older schools had
      been full of objects and figures as minutely rendered as those
      on the foremost places, only ever so much smaller. Compare with
      these distances the simply treated expanse of country offered
      to view in P. de Koninck's landscapes. Here we do not have
      merely a series of objects getting smaller as they recede, but
      a far more generalised representation of the whole face of
      nature bathed in an atmosphere in which objects are lost to
      view" (Baldwin Brown's _Fine Arts_, p. 301).

There is a repetition of this picture in the Royal Museum at the Hague.
One may presume that Koninck's pictures had aristocratic purchasers;
for, unlike the painters of "pastoral landscape," he is fond of
introducing persons of distinction--here it is a hawking party; in 974
a carriage-and-six with outriders.


837. THE HAY HARVEST.

  _Jan Lingelbach_ (Dutch: 1623-1674).

      Though a German by birth, Lingelbach is included amongst the
      Dutch painters; for he lived chiefly in Amsterdam, and was
      largely employed in inserting the figures in the landscapes of
      Wynants and others. He also passed some years in Italy, and
      frequently painted Italian scenes and incidents.


838. THE DUET.

  _Gabriel Metsu_ (Dutch: 1630-1667).

      Metsu is one of the _genre_ painters who are now appraised
      most highly--sums of £2580 and £3200 severally were given
      at the Secrétan Sale for pictures of his. In the Hertford
      House Gallery are some good specimens which the late Sir
      Richard Wallace acquired at great cost. Though, like most of
      his brother-artists, he was fond of painting tavern-scenes
      (_e.g._ No. 970), he was also a painter of high life and the
      drawing-room, like Terburg and Netscher. "In each of these
      spheres he combined humour with expression, a keen appreciation
      of nature with feeling, and breadth with delicacy of touch, in
      a manner unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries" (Crowe).
      "When his pictures have escaped the ordeal of ruthless cleaning
      they are pervaded by the finest tone, and the whites in them
      have that delicate glow which distance and atmosphere lend
      to snowy peaks. It is obvious that he caressed this least
      manageable of colours with unceasing love. Altogether his works
      have a quality of distinction rare in those of any school"
      (Burton). Metsu's father was a painter, whose third wife (the
      mother of Gabriel) was a painter's widow. The boy was taught by
      Gerard Dou, and already at the age of fourteen was admitted a
      member of the Leyden Guild of Painters. In 1650 he removed to
      Amsterdam, where he fell under the influence of Rembrandt. The
      large picture in the Louvre of "The Woman taken in Adultery,"
      signed by Metsu and dated 1653, shows this fact. Metsu did not,
      however, adhere to religious subjects, but applied the lessons
      he learnt from the great master to subjects more congenial to
      his talent.


839. THE MUSIC LESSON.

  _Gabriel Metsu_ (Dutch: 1630-1667).

A picture that might serve as an illustration of "the gamut of
Hortensio" (see _Taming of the Shrew_, Act. iii. sc. 1).


840. A LADY FEEDING A PARROT.

  _Frans van Mieris_ (Dutch: 1635-1681).

      This painter, the son of a goldsmith (one of twenty-three
      children) and the pupil of Gerard Dou, is known as "Old Frans,"
      to distinguish him from his grandson of that name, who, like
      his son William (see 841), was also a painter. The works of
      Frans are very much superior to those of his successors.
      "Unlike William Mieris, he rarely cared to carry the eye from
      the beautiful painting of the figures by working up or covering
      the base of the casement with highly finished bas-reliefs. That
      kind of thing may be looked for in William Mieris's curiously
      finished pictures, but certainly is not wanted in the works
      of Francis. His female figures, independently of being always
      well painted, are often graceful and pretty; he could paint a
      lady at her toilet with the delicacy and feeling of Metsu and
      Terburg, and was besides happy in varying the expressions and
      faces of his female beauties; he was fond of painting them in
      richly coloured jackets trimmed with fur. He was also a capital
      hand at painting birds" (Seguier). The elegance and high
      technical qualities of his productions brought him numerous and
      distinguished patrons. The Grand Duke of Tuscany visited him at
      Leyden, and the Archduke Leopold William desired to attract him
      to Vienna. Mieris, however, would not leave Leyden; nor did his
      large and lucrative practice induce any carelessness or neglect
      in his work.


841. A FISH AND POULTRY SHOP.

  _Willem van Mieris_ (Dutch: 1662-1747).

      The son of Frans (see above, 840). He succeeded to his father's
      practice, but was an indifferent imitator. A comparison between
      him and the leading "Little Masters of Holland" will show the
      difference between true finish and laborious trifling.

Decidedly an "artistic" shop: notice the elaborate bas-relief (as also
in 825), with marine subjects suitable to a fishmonger's, below the
shop-window, and the handsome curtain ready to serve as shutters. The
picture is sometimes called "The Cat," from the cat eyeing the duck
whose head hangs from the window-sill.


842. A GARDEN.

  _Frédéric de Moucheron_ (Dutch: 1633-1686).

      This painter came of an Antwerp family, but he studied and
      afterwards settled at Amsterdam. He also studied and worked
      for some years in Paris. He confined himself to landscape;
      Lingelbach, A. van de Velde and others were employed to paint
      in his figures.

The figures here are ascribed to Adrian van de Velde.


843. BLOWING BUBBLES.

  _Gaspard Netscher_ (Dutch: 1639-1684).

      Netscher, one of the chief painters of Dutch "high life," had
      a somewhat eventful career. He was born at Heidelberg, which
      was then being besieged. His mother, after seeing her two elder
      children die of hunger before her eyes, escaped with Gaspard
      through the investing lines to Arnheim. The boy was intended
      for a doctor, but took to painting and studied under Terburg.
      In 1659 he started on a tour to Italy, but at Bordeaux he fell
      in love with a girl from Liège, whom he married. He settled
      at Bordeaux, but his pictures, such as this, which are now
      so much valued, then brought him but slight remuneration;
      and after returning to the Hague, he turned his attention to
      portrait-painting. Several of his portraits are of English
      sitters, and it is supposed that he visited this country, but
      this is uncertain. Netscher's portraits are generally on a
      small scale, and very highly finished. He was patronised by
      William III., and was rapidly acquiring fame, when he died at
      the age of forty-five. His _genre_ pieces resemble those of F.
      Mieris.


844. MATERNAL INSTRUCTION.

  _Netscher_ (Dutch: 1639-1684). _See 843._

Notice in the background, over a cupboard, hanging in a black frame, a
small copy of Rubens' "Brazen Serpent," now in this collection (59).


845. A LADY AT A SPINNING WHEEL.

  _Netscher_ (Dutch: 1639-1684). _See 843._


846. THE ALCHYMIST.

  _Adrian van Ostade_ (Dutch: 1610-1685).

      Adrian, the elder of the two Ostades, was a pupil of Frans
      Hals. Later in life, he felt the influence of Rembrandt, and
      he painted some religious subjects. But he is best known for
      his scenes from peasant life. These are now greatly esteemed,
      and pictures which the painter himself probably sold for a few
      shillings now fetch hundreds and even thousands of pounds.
      Adrian Ostade is the contemporary of Teniers, and it is
      interesting to compare their respective delineations of rustic
      life. "The contrast lies in the different condition of the
      agricultural classes of Brabant and Holland. Brabant has more
      sun, more comfort, and a higher type of humanity; Teniers, in
      consequence, is silvery and sparkling; the people he paints are
      fair specimens of a well-built race. Holland, in the vicinity
      of Haarlem, seems to have suffered much in war; the air is
      moist and hazy, and the people, as depicted by Ostade, are
      short, ill-favoured, and marked with the stamp of adversity on
      their features and dress. The greatness of Ostade lies in the
      fact that he often caught the poetic side of the life of the
      peasant class, in spite of its ugliness and stunted form and
      mis-shapen features. He did so by giving their vulgar sports,
      their quarrels, even their quieter moods of enjoyment, the
      magic light of the sun-gleam, and by clothing the wreck of
      cottages with gay vegetation" (Crowe). Ostade was especially
      fond of the foliage of the vine. He is often coarse, but
      sometimes shows a genuine sense of humour. He had, says Sir
      F. Burton, "artistic qualities of a high order--consummate
      skill in composition and taste in arrangement; subtlety of
      chiaroscuro and refined delicacy of colour; appropriate, and
      never overstrained action in the figures, and precision,
      combined with breadth, of handling. His earlier pictures are
      the coolest in tone; those of his middle period more golden,
      showing gradually the influence of Rembrandt. His drawings and
      etchings are extremely fine." His father, Jan Hendrik, was a
      weaver; the children adopted the name of Ostade from a small
      hamlet, near Eindhoven, which their parents left to settle at
      Haarlem. There Adrian lived and worked, being enrolled as a
      member of the Civic Guard in 1636, and becoming Dean of the
      Painters' Guild in 1662. He was twice married; the second time,
      to a daughter of Jan van Goyen.

Under the three-legged stool is a paper on which is written a warning
of the vanity of the alchymist's labour--_oleum et operam perdis_:
"you are wasting your cost and pains"--a warning not unjustified in a
painter's mouth, for more than one old master devoted the end of his
life to the fruitless task of making gold (_e.g._ Parmigiano, see 33).
The English painter, Romney, too, dabbled in alchemy when he was a
young man, and in his declining years sketched a melodrama representing
the progress of an alchymist in quest of the philosopher's stone.
The picture is signed (on a shovel hanging against the wall), and
dated 1661. It is, says Mr. J. T. Nettleship in a comparison between
Ostade and George Morland, "a marvellous example of the _atmosphère de
tableau_. Everything takes its place, but is also a wonder of finish.
The whole picture gives you a large feeling of space and tone. And
there is no bogeydom, no straining after weirdness; the whole is a
common workshop, the scene of the man's daily life; he feeds well, one
is sure--if he has dreams his face does not betray them, it is just
the face of a born craftsman. It is impossible to look at this picture
without acknowledging the influence such work must have had on Morland.
But Morland never achieved such delicacy united to breadth, such finish
combined with harmony of effect, though before he took the wrong turn
he came near achieving it" (_George Morland_, p. 23).


847. A VILLAGE SCENE.

  _Isaac van Ostade_ (Dutch: 1621-1649).

      Isaac, born at Haarlem, was the younger brother of Adrian van
      Ostade, with whom he remained as pupil till 1641, when he set
      up in business on his own account. There is a record of a
      transaction of his in that year which throws an interesting
      light on the picture-dealing world of the day. In 1643 a dealer
      summoned him for breach of a contract made in 1641 to deliver
      six pictures and seven "rounds" for twenty-seven florins. Part
      of Isaac's defence was that his pictures had since risen in
      value. The case was referred to the Painters' Guild, which
      decided that he must perform his contract, but that the number
      of the "rounds" should be reduced to five and the price of the
      whole be increased to fifty florins. It may be conjectured that
      the low value thus set upon the cottage scenes in his brother's
      manner induced Isaac to cultivate a different style of his own.
      This consisted largely of village inns (of which the present
      picture is a capital example), and winter scenes (among which
      No. 963 in our Gallery is a masterpiece). He combined a genuine
      appreciation of nature with great skill in the treatment of
      figures. He was fond, as will be seen, of introducing a white
      horse to serve as the principal light in his compositions.

This picture was bought by Sir Robert Peel for 400 guineas, and was
esteemed, says Mrs. Jameson in her catalogue of his collection, "the
masterpiece of the painter. The transparent, sparkling beauty of the
execution was never surpassed. The figures, the foliage, the animals,
the atmospheric effect, are all perfect."


848. A SKATING SCENE.

  _Isaac van Ostade_ (Dutch: 1621-1649). _See 847._


849. LANDSCAPE WITH CATTLE.

  _Paul Potter_ (Dutch: 1625-1654).

      Paul Potter, the best of the Dutch cattle painters, was the
      son of an artist (see 1008), and a remarkable instance of
      precocious talent, having been a clever painter and etcher
      at the age of fourteen. The environs of Enkhuizen, where
      he was born, did not offer scenes of surpassing beauty;
      but the rich brown and gold tints of the cattle contrasted
      pleasantly with the verdure of the flat fields. These Potter
      set himself to study and to paint; and so accurately did he
      master the anatomy of cattle that a writer on the natural
      history of Holland, in 1769-79, did not hesitate to utilise,
      in order to illustrate his work, paintings and sketches by
      Potter, including geometrical drawings which he had made to
      demonstrate the proper proportions of cattle. His skill brought
      him much patronage at the Hague; and in 1650 he married the
      daughter of a distinguished architect in that city, who made
      some objections, it is said, to his daughter marrying a mere
      "painter of animals." But the painter of animals prospered
      better than many of his contemporary painters of men, and
      both at the Hague and at Amsterdam his works continued to be
      in great request. But a too close application to his art told
      on a weak constitution, and he died of consumption at the age
      of twenty-nine (Cundall's _Landscape and Pastoral Painters
      of Holland_, pp. 113 _sq._). For a century after his death
      his works realised very small sums, but latterly they have
      been sought after at extravagant prices. Technically they are
      very accomplished; but Ruskin calls attention to a certain
      defect of feeling in his treatment. He "does not care even for
      sheep, but only for wool; regards not cows, but cow-hides. He
      attains great dexterity in drawing tufts and locks, lingers in
      the little parallel ravines and furrows of fleece that open
      across sheep's backs as they turn; is unsurpassed in twisting
      a horn or pointing a nose; but he cannot paint eyes, nor
      perceive any condition of an animal's mind except its desire of
      grazing" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 12). In
      estimating his work, it should however be remembered that he
      died very young, and died learning. The famous "Young Bull" of
      the Hague, painted in 1647 when he was twenty-two, is usually
      considered his masterpiece. Rather, says Fromentin, is it only
      a _tour de force_, a wonderful study. The portrait of the
      painter as he appeared in his last days, done by his friend Van
      der Helst, is in the Hague Museum.

Signed, and dated 1651, and therefore among the painter's later works.


850. A MAN'S PORTRAIT.

  _Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See 45._

Dated 1635. The sitter wears the typical "Rembrandt collar."


851. VENUS SLEEPING.

  _Sebastiano Ricci_ (Venetian: 1659-1734).

      An unimportant work by a painter who worked for several years
      in this country, and covered many walls and ceilings with his
      facile compositions. Examples of his religious and mythological
      pictures may be seen at the Dulwich Gallery. Ricci, says
      Dr. Richter in his catalogue of that collection, "is one of
      the most attractive painters of the Italian decadence. His
      compositions are lively and ingenious, without, however, being
      profound." There are also several of his works at Hampton
      Court. He was born at Belluno in the Venetian State, and before
      coming to England was employed by the Duke of Parma and at the
      Viennese court in decorating the palace of Schoenbrunn. He left
      England in disgust on finding that the work of decorating the
      cupola of St. Paul's was to be entrusted to a native artist,
      Sir James Thornhill. "Ricci had great facility in imitating
      the style of other masters. His picture of the 'Apostles
      adoring the Sacrament' in the church of S. Giustina at Padua is
      painted in imitation of the cupola of S. Giovanni at Parma by
      Correggio; and his 'S. Gregorio' at Bergamo recalls the works
      of Guercino. But his most successful imitations were those of
      Paul Veronese, many of which he is said to have sold as by that
      master. He deceived the French painter La Fosse, who avenged
      himself by the sarcastic remark, 'For the future, take my
      advice and paint no more Ricci's'" (Bryan).


852. THE CHAPEAU DE POIL.

  _Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See 38._

One of the best known and most be-copied pictures in the Gallery. Its
fame among artists "depends to no slight extent on its being a _tour
de force_. The head is painted in reflected light, so as to come as
near as may be to Queen Elizabeth's _shadowless_ ideal" (Armstrong:
_Notes on the National Gallery_, p. 31). "No one who has not beheld
this masterpiece of painting can form any conception," says Dr. Waagen,
"of the transparency and brilliancy with which the local colours in the
features and complexion, though under the shadow of a broad-brimmed
hat, are brought out and made to tell, while the different parts are
rounded and relieved, with the finest knowledge and use of reflected
lights." The expression of the subject is as much a _tour de force_ as
the technical treatment--

    I know a maiden fair to see,
        Take care!...
    She gives a side-glance and looks down,
        Beware! beware!...
    She has a bosom as white as snow,
        Take care!
    She knows how much it is best to show,
        Beware! beware!
        Trust her not,
    She is fooling thee!

  LONGFELLOW: from the German.

The picture is a portrait of Susanne Fourment, an elder sister of
Rubens's second wife, Helène Fourment. Susanne often sat to Rubens;
other paintings and drawings of her by his hand exist. She afterwards
married Arnold Lunden. The picture remained in the possession of the
painter until his death, when it passed into that of Nicholas Lunden,
who had married Isabella, a daughter of Rubens by his second wife,
Helène Fourment. The picture remained in the Lunden family until 1822,
when it was sold by auction for 36,000 florins and brought to England.
After being offered in vain to George IV., it was bought by Sir Robert
Peel for 3500 guineas. Why and when this picture of a lady in a beaver
hat acquired the inappropriate title of "Chapeau de Paille" ("The Straw
Hat"), by which it has hitherto been called, is unknown. Perhaps the
title is a corruption of "Chapeau d'Espagne." An entirely different
story about the picture was current in the Lunden family. According
to this not very probable tradition, Miss Susanne had refused to sit
to Rubens, so he painted her unawares whilst she was in her garden,
wearing a large straw hat. When the picture was done, she pardoned the
flattering indiscretion and accepted it as a gift. Rubens afterwards
begged leave to take back the portrait, promising in return a work
in which he would put all his talent. This was a _replica_ of the
same portrait, but instead of a straw hat (_chapeau de paille_) he
introduced in the second version the beaver hat (_chapeau de poil_)
that we see. The Lunden family had christened the original "Chapeau
de Paille," and the present picture has ever since retained the same
title. (See letter in the _Times_, August 6, 1886, from M. Jules Nollée
de Noduwez, himself a connection of the Lunden family).


853. THE TRIUMPH OF SILENUS.

  _Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See 38._

For the subject see under 93. "Rubens painted these subjects with
a gusto in which there is something fearful, so wonderful is the
skill, the felicity of execution, the life, the energy, the fancy
displayed--so gross and so repulsive the sentiment. In Niccolo
Poussin's Bacchanalian scenes we have the licence and the revels of
gods and nymphs, and of the golden age. Rubens gives us, with perhaps a
truer moral feeling but more depraved taste, mere animal sensuality,
with all its most brutal attributes" (Mrs. Jameson's _Handbook to the
Private Galleries of London_, p. 362). This picture was in the artist's
possession at the time of his death, and was then bought for Cardinal
Richelieu. It was afterwards in the collection of Sir Robert Peel, who
gave £1100 for it.


853. a-p.

These sixteen drawings by Rubens formed part of the rich collection of
Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., after whose death they were acquired for
Sir Robert Peel. They were purchased for the nation in 1871 with the
Peel Collection of pictures. The subjects are as follows:--

      =853 a=, =b=, =c=, and =d=. Four studies for the famous picture
      at Munich, representing the "Fall of the Damned." In black
      chalk, tinted slightly. "Inconceivably fine," says Mrs. Jameson.

      =853 e.= THE MARTYRDOM OF A SAINT.--He kneels, and a woman is
      about to bind his eyes. Fifteen figures with angels.

      =853 f.= THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY GHOST.--Study for the picture
      at Munich.

      =853 g.= THE CRUCIFIXION.--Drawing from the great picture at
      Antwerp, done for the engraver to work from.

      =853 h.= PORTRAIT OF A GIRL; with a cap and feather. Study from
      one of his own children.

      =853 i.= PORTRAIT OF A LADY, with flowers in her hair. Probably
      a study from his first wife. "Extremely fine," says Mrs.
      Jameson, "and full of life."

      =853 j.= HEAD OF A LADY, in chalk and sepia, wonderfully
      spirited.

      =853 k.= SKETCH FOR MONUMENTAL SCULPTURE, or design for a
      frontispiece--with a figure of "Fame."

      =853 l.= THE SAME, with figures of Moses and Aaron.

      =853 m.= THE SAME, with satyrs.

      =853 n.= THE SAME, representing the siege of Breda: Minerva and
      Hercules, prisoners, implements of war, etc.

      =853 o.= STUDY OF A LIONESS, introduced into his picture of
      "Daniel in the Lion's Den."

      =853 p.= SKETCH OF A LION HUNT.--Study for the great picture at
      Dresden.


854. A FOREST SCENE.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See 627._

Of this picture, when it was in Sir Robert Peel's collection, Mrs.
Jameson tells a pretty tale. "'I cannot express to you,' said the
statesman, 'the feeling of tranquillity, of restoration, with which,
in an interval of harassing official business, I look around me here.'
And while he spoke, in the slow, quiet tone of a weary man, he turned
his eyes on a forest scene of Ruysdael, and gazed on it for a minute
or two in silence, as if its cool, dewy verdure, its deep seclusion,
its transparent waters stealing through the glade, had sent refreshment
into his very soul" (_Handbook to the Private Galleries of London_, p.
xix.).


855. A WATERFALL.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See 627._


856. THE MUSIC-MASTER.

  _Jan Steen_ (Dutch: 1626-1679).

      It is in the collections of Holland, and especially in the
      Museum of Amsterdam, that the best works of this remarkable
      painter are to be seen--a painter whose talent and occasional
      grace made Reynolds name him in the same breath with Raphael,
      and who has by other critics been called the Molière of
      painting. This latter comparison happily expresses the dramatic
      and intellectual quality of Steen's best works. He drew not
      merely Dutch life, but human nature. He depicts the comedy
      of human life, for the most part, in a spirit of genial
      toleration, but sometimes with touches of almost Hogarthian
      satire. With regard to technical qualities, his best works are
      admirable for their skilful composition, brilliant touch, and
      harmonious colouring. "Steen when it pleased him was an artist
      of great ability. Unfortunately it did not always please him
      to be so, and then his colour became blurred, his execution
      trivial, and the general aspect of his figures heavy and
      monotonous; but whenever he exerts himself he becomes once
      more and remains a great master. It is the more astonishing
      to find these defects, as they are peculiar neither to the
      beginning nor to the end of his career, and therefore cannot
      be attributed to a hard apprenticeship or premature decay.
      They are to be explained by the irregular life which the
      painter led" (Havard). The number of his works, however,--of
      which more than 500 have been catalogued--seem to negative the
      stories in which some biographers accept of Steen's drunken
      and dissolute life. He was the son of a brewer and was born at
      Leyden. He first studied under a German painter, Knüpfer, at
      Utrecht; afterwards with Adrian van Ostade, and Jan van Goyen
      whose daughter he married in 1649. In the previous year he had
      joined the Painters' Guild of Haarlem. That he was improvident
      is proved by records of executions for debt which have been
      discovered in the archives of that town. His pictures must have
      fetched small prices, for he contracted to pay the year's rent
      of his house for 1666-67 with three portraits "painted as well
      as he was able," the rent being 29 florins. In 1669 his wife
      and his father died, and Steen, who is supposed to have resided
      for some years at the Hague, returned to Leyden and opened a
      tavern, and for the rest of his life combined the businesses of
      painter and publican.

A work of some humour. The music-master is sadly bored with the
exercises of his pupil at the harpsichord, but his disgust is fully
shared by the young brother whose turn is to come next, and who is
bringing a lute into the room. The picture is signed on the harpsichord.


857, 858, 859, 860. THE FOUR SEASONS.

  _Teniers_ (Flemish: 1610-1694). _See 154._

Very interesting little pictures, as characteristic of the entire
want of poetry in Teniers' art. Compare Mantegna's version of
Summer and Autumn (1125), or recall Botticelli's lovely vision of
Spring at Florence, and one sees in a moment the difference in art
between poetical imagination and vulgarity. To Teniers, Spring--"the
sweet spring, the year's pleasant king"--is only a man carrying a
flower-pot. Summer--"all the sweet season of summertide"--suggests
nothing but a man holding a wheat-sheaf. Autumn--"season of mists
and mellow fruitfulness"--brings him only a first glass of wine;
and Winter--"white winter, rough nurse, that rocks the dead cold
year"--only a second. These pictures (which are painted on copper),
were once in the possession of Prince Talleyrand, and Sir Robert Peel
bought them in 1823 for £189.


861. A COUNTRY SCENE.

  _Teniers_ (Flemish: 1610-1694). _See 154._

The man with the barrow is a portrait of Teniers' gardener.


862. THE SURPRISE.

  _Teniers_ (Flemish: 1610-1694). _See 154._

Hardly an instance in which "vice itself loses half its evil by losing
all its grossness." It is a very vulgar intrigue. The husband courts
without passion; the maid-servant "stoops to folly" without grace; the
wife surprises the lovers without dignity.


863. THE RICH MAN IN HELL.

  _Teniers_ (Flemish: 1610-1694). _See 154._

The sequel to the story of Dives and Lazarus. "And it came to pass,
that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's
bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried. And in hell he lift
up his eyes, being in torments" (Luke xvi. 22, 23). A favourite
subject with Teniers, giving him an opportunity for painting comic
monstrosities.


864. THE GUITAR LESSON.

  _Gerard Terburg_ (Dutch: 1617-1681).

      Terburg is the most refined of all the Dutch painters of
      "conversation pieces." He depicts with admirable truth, both
      in his portraits and _genre_ pictures, the life of the wealthy
      and cultured classes of his time. His figures are well drawn
      and expressive, and the accessories are duly subordinated.
      He renders the texture of draperies with great skill, and
      his colouring is at once rich and quiet. He was the son of a
      wealthy man, a traveller and a connoisseur who himself imparted
      the rudiments of art to his son. Gerard afterwards studied in
      Amsterdam and Haarlem. In 1635 he visited England, and thence
      made the grand tour of the Continent, studying the works of
      Titian and others. On his return to Holland he remained some
      time at Amsterdam, learning much from the works of Rembrandt.
      In 1646 he was at Münster, where he painted the famous picture,
      No. 896 in our Gallery. This excited such admiration on account
      of the excellence of its portraits and general truth to nature,
      that the Spanish ambassador took Terburg with him to Madrid,
      where he was knighted by Philip IV. and had the opportunity of
      adding a study of Velazquez to his artistic advantages. Terburg
      settled eventually at Deventer, where he married and became
      burgomaster: a full-length portrait of him in that capacity is
      in the Museum at the Hague.

This is a characteristic example of the painter's conversation pieces.
Sir Robert Peel bought it in 1826 for 920 guineas.


865. A COAST SCENE.

  _Jan van de Cappelle_ (Dutch: painted about 1650-1680).

      Of this painter, whose works have of recent years become
      popular with collectors, the Dutch writers have left no record.
      Nor has anything been discovered about him beyond the fact
      that, on the occasion of his marriage in 1653, he received the
      freedom of the city of Amsterdam. One may connect with this
      fact the state barge, introduced in some of his pictures,--or
      the corporation barge, it may be,--much resembling the barges
      belonging to the City and the City Companies which not long ago
      might still be seen on the Thames at London, and some of which
      survive, transformed into College barges at Oxford. Cappelle's
      works are comparatively rare; they show that he loved a calm
      sea, lit up with warm rays.


866. A STREET IN COLOGNE.

  _Jan van der Heyden_ (Dutch: 1637-1712).

      Van der Heyden (or Heyde), who has been called, from the
      minute neatness of his workmanship, "the Dou of architectural
      painters,"[192] was one of the first Dutch artists to devote
      himself to that class of subject. It was a result no doubt of
      the Italianising tendency of the time. "It would seem that they
      required to be initiated in this style by the views of foreign
      market-places and squares with which the Italianising painters
      had decorated the saloons of Amsterdam, and that in the
      presence of this invasion of forums and piazzas they exclaimed,
      'Have we not streets, squares, and monuments to paint?'"
      (Havard: _The Dutch School_, p. 238). Of course they had; and
      no works of the time are more interesting than these minute
      historical records. "A striking feature in Van der Heyden is
      the pencilling or dividing of the brickwork of the houses and
      walls by delicate white lines; so finely are these drawn that
      if it were not for the trouble, one might count the bricks
      in his buildings" (Seguier). But he had the art of combining
      this microscopic detail with breadth of effect. The division
      of labour in art work was in his time very fully applied; and
      Van der Heyden's range was very limited. He seldom turned his
      hand to anything but brick houses and churches in streets or
      squares, or rows along canals, or the moated granges common in
      his native country. He could draw neither man nor beast, and
      relied on Adrian van der Velde to enliven his street scenes
      with spirited figures. Van der Heyden was born at Gorcum, and
      was apprenticed to a glass-painter. He then moved to Amsterdam
      and studied architectural drawing. He visited England, Belgium,
      and the Rhenish Provinces. In the later part of his life he
      varied the practice of art with the pursuit of mechanics, for
      which he had a strong turn. He invented various improvements
      in the fire-engine, introduced the use of street-lamps, and at
      the time of his death was superintendent of the lighting and
      director of the firemen's company at Amsterdam.

In the background is seen the then unfinished tower of Cologne
Cathedral surmounted by the old vane. This was a favourite subject of
the painter; there is another version of it in the Wallace Collection.
The figures are attributed to A. van de Velde.


867. THE FARM COTTAGE.

  _Adrian van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1636-1672).

      Adrian, the son of William van de Velde the elder, the marine
      painter, first studied under his father, and next under
      Wynants, the landscape painter. He showed his talent very
      early. "Wynants," said that painter's wife, when the young
      Adrian entered his studio, "you have found your master." He
      afterwards studied the figure under Wouwerman. His talent was
      versatile, for he painted figures, animals, and landscapes with
      equal truth and refinement. His large canvases (_e.g._ No. 80
      in the Wallace Collection) are hard, and leave the spectator
      cold; but his cabinet pictures are refined in outline and
      delicate in tone. He was fond of village scenery with cattle
      introduced, in which kind are several good examples in our
      Gallery. He was also successful in winter scenes. Of his sandy
      coast scenes there is a choice example in the Six Collection
      at Amsterdam. The value and interest of many pictures by
      Ruysdael, Van der Heyden, Hobbema, and other painters of the
      time, were enhanced by figures inserted by Adrian. He must have
      had wonderful facility and industry, for in addition to these
      insertions, and in spite of his short life, the catalogue of
      his own pictures includes nearly 200 items.

This picture is signed, and dated 1658. The effect is that of a fine
warm summer afternoon.


868. THE FORD.

  _Adrian van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1636-1672). _See 867._

"The figures and faces," says Mrs. Jameson in her catalogue of the Peel
Collection, "are finished with inexpressible delicacy; the animals
are painted with characteristic truth; the foliage of the trees seems
stirred by the breeze;--in short, it is a most rare piece of work in
every part, and full of pastoral sentiment, though there is certainly
nothing Arcadian in the personages introduced." Sir Robert Peel bought
the picture in 1840 for 760 gs.


869. A FROST SCENE.

  _Adrian van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1636-1672). _See 867._

This picture--known as "Les Amusements d'Hiver"--is signed, and dated
1668. The men are playing hockey. Other figures are occupied with a
sledge. On the left is a refreshment booth.


870. SHIPPING IN A CALM.

  _W. van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707). _See 149._

A dogger, with hanging sail, in the foreground; behind it a
frigate--"and a variety of vessels, at every different gradation of
distance, carry the eye back to the horizon. The air and ocean are
still as sleep. Signed, and dated 1657, when the painter was only 24."


871. BATHING AT LOW WATER.

  _W. van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707). _See 149._

Incidentally a good study in the "philosophy of clothes." The
painter hits off with much humour the essential difference between
those who regard man as "by nature a naked animal"--seen in the
naked bathers--and those who regard him as emphatically "a clothed
animal"--seen in the prim old gentleman who gets himself carried on a
man's back. Intermediate between these two classes are those who use
clothes as a convenience, but are not entirely subject to them--such,
for instance, is the comfortable old fellow smoking his pipe and wading
home, not without obvious contempt for the old gentleman riding, as
aforesaid, in ignominious slavery to his "Sunday best." Dated 1661;
bought by Sir Robert Peel from the collection of the Duc de Berri.


872. A SLIGHT BREEZE.

  _W. van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707). _See 149._


873. THE COAST OF SCHEVENINGEN.

  _W. van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707). _See 149._

"A scene well known to those who have visited the Hague, and frequently
represented by Van de Velde. There are the high sand-hills to the
left, and above them are seen a few fishermen's huts and the little
church of Scheveningen. Along the beach are numerous figures, variously
grouped and employed; the most conspicuous are several persons near a
post-waggon. The sea is quietly rolling in to the shore, impelled by a
light breeze. The figures are painted with exquisite finish and spirit
by Adrian van de Velde" (Mrs. Jameson). Sir Robert Peel bought this
picture from the Pourtalès Collection for £800. It is a characteristic
specimen of the master, showing how his version of the sea was coloured
by that "mixture of sand and sea-water" which belongs to his native
coasts. "I have come," writes Fromentin, "to Scheveningen. Before me is
the calm, gray, fleecy North Sea. Who has not seen it? One thinks of
Ruysdael, of Van Goyen, of Van de Velde. One easily finds their point
of view. I could tell you the exact place where they sat, as if the
trace of them had remained imprinted for two centuries: the sea is on
the left; the ridged sand-hills stand out on the right, stretch away,
diminish and are lost insensibly in the dim horizon; the grass is poor;
the sand-hills are pale; the sea-shore is colourless; the sea is like
milk; the sky has silky clouds and is wonderfully aerial."


874. A CALM AT SEA.

  _W. van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707). _See 149._

A Dutch frigate and a small English cutter becalmed. "There is a repose
in the air, a clearness in the still, smooth sea, quite indescribable"
(Mrs. Jameson).


875. A LIGHT BREEZE.

  _W. van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707). _See 149._

Two doggers in the foreground; behind one of them, a Dutch frigate.


876. A GALE.

  _W. van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707). _See 149._


877. HIS OWN PORTRAIT.

  _Van Dyck_ (Flemish: 1599-1641). _See 49._

That Van Dyck was at a very early age a portrait-painter of rare merit
may be seen, from this likeness of himself while still quite young and
beardless. In the Wallace Collection there is another early portrait of
himself, in the character of Paris. Our picture is the portrait of an
artist and a man of refinement. Notice especially the long, tapering
fingers--delicate almost to the point of feminineness. They are very
characteristic of Van Dyck's work, who, indeed, drew all his hands
from one model: the same delicate fingers may be seen in the so-called
"portrait of Rubens" (49). In giving this delicacy to all sitters Van
Dyck fell no doubt into mannerism; in giving it to great artists such
as himself he was entirely right. Palmistry assigns fine, tapering
fingers to "artistic temperament," and rightly, for fine fingers are
necessary for fine work. "The art of painting, properly so called,
consists in laying on the least possible colour that will produce the
required result; and this measurement, in all the ultimate--that is to
say the principal--operations of colouring, is so delicate that not
one human hand in a million has the required lightness" (_Two Paths_,
Appendix iv., where much interesting matter on this subject will be
found).


877 A. THE CRUCIFIXION.


877 B. RINALDO AND ARMIDA.

  _Van Dyck_ (Flemish: 1599-1641). _See 49._

These drawings were bought with the Peel Collection. The former is the
study for an altar-piece of the church of St. Michael at Ghent--"a most
superb drawing," says Mrs. Jameson. The latter is a drawing prepared
for the engraver, Peter de Jode, from the large picture of the subject
in the Louvre. It was the sight of that picture that determined King
Charles I. to secure the services of Van Dyck.


878. "THE PRETTY MILKMAID."

  _Philips Wouwerman_ (Dutch: 1619-1668).

      Wouwerman--whose pictures may nearly always be told by a
      white horse, which is almost his sign-manual--is selected
      by Ruskin as the central instance of the "hybrid school of
      landscape." To understand this term we must recall his division
      of all landscape, in its relation to human beings, into the
      following heads: (1) _Heroic_, representing an imaginary
      world inhabited by noble men and spiritual powers--Titian;
      (2) _Classical_, representing an imaginary world inhabited by
      perfectly civilised men and inferior spiritual powers--Poussin;
      (3) _Pastoral_, representing peasant life in its daily
      work--Cuyp; (4) _Contemplative_, directed to observation of
      the powers of nature and record of historical associations
      connected with landscape, contrasted with existing states
      of human life--Turner. The _hybrid_ school of which Berchem
      and Wouwerman are the chief representatives is that which
      endeavours to unite the irreconcilable sentiment of two
      or more of the above-mentioned classes. Thus here we have
      Wouwerman's conception of the heroic in the officers and in
      the rocky landscape; of the pastoral in the pretty milkmaid,
      to whom an officer is speaking, and who gives her name to the
      picture. So again the painter's desire to assemble all kinds
      of pleasurable elements may be seen in the crowded composition
      of an adjoining picture (879). Wouwerman is further selected
      by Ruskin as the chief type of vulgarity in art--meaning by
      vulgarity, insensibility. He introduces into his pictures--see,
      for instance, 879--every element that he thinks pleasurable,
      yet has not imagination enough to enter heartily into any of
      them. His pleasure is "without a gleam of higher things," and
      in his war-pieces there is "no heroism, awe or mercy, hope or
      faith." With regard, finally, to the execution, it is "careful
      and conscientious," the tone of his pictures generally dark
      and gray, the figures being thrown out in spots of light
      (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. viii.). "There is no
      good painting," Ruskin says of a Wouwerman at Turin, "properly
      so called, anywhere, but of clever, dotty, sparkling, telling
      execution, as much as the canvas will hold" (_ibid._ § 8).
      Wouwerman was born at Haarlem; his father was a painter. From
      him Philips learnt the practice of art, afterwards studying
      landscape under Wynants. He worked for some time at Hamburg, in
      the studio of Everard Decker. In 1640 he returned to Haarlem,
      where he remained for the rest of his life. He had two brothers
      who were also painters. His productivity was enormous. He
      lived forty-nine years, and it has been calculated that even
      if we deny his authorship of one half the pictures ascribed to
      him, we leave him with at least 500, or about one for every
      three weeks during his productive years (Bryan's _Dictionary
      of Painters_). Few galleries are without several pictures by
      Wouwerman. In the Wallace Collection he is represented by six,
      in the Dulwich Gallery by ten.

The picture is known after the milkmaid whom the officer is chucking
under the chin, whilst the trumpeter takes a sarcastic pleasure, we may
suppose, in sounding all the louder the call "to arms."


879. THE INTERIOR OF A STABLE.

  _Wouwerman_ (Dutch: 1619-1668). _See 878._

The profusion of pleasurable incident in this picture has already been
noticed (see under 878) in connection with Wouwerman's bent of mind;
but notice also how the crowded composition spoils the effect of a
picture as a picture. Clearly also will it spoil the stable-keeper's
business. He eyes the coin which one of his customers is giving him
with all the discontent of a London cabman, and has no eye to spare
for the smart lady with her cavalier, who are just entering the
stable. This is a good instance of what has been called "Wouwerman's
nonsense-pictures, a mere assemblage of things to be imitated, items
without a meaning" (W. B. Scott: _Half-hour Lectures on Art_, p. 299).


880. ON THE SEA SHORE.

  _Wouwerman_ (Dutch: 1619-1668). _See 878._

This picture was formerly in the collection of Queen Elizabeth of
Spain, whose arms are stamped on the back. Sir Robert Peel bought it in
1823 for 450 guineas.


881. GATHERING FAGGOTS.


882. A LANDSCAPE.

  _Wouwerman_ (Dutch: 1619-1668). _See 878._


883. A BEGGAR BY THE ROADSIDE.

  _Jan Wynants_ (Dutch: about 1615-1679).

      Wynants--spelt also Wijnants--the painter of the sandy wayside,
      was one of the founders of the Dutch school of landscape, and
      was an artist of much originality. Out of a few docks and
      thistles, it has been said, a tree, and a sandbank, he could
      make a picture. "In the choice of his subjects Wijnants shows
      a preference," says Sir F. Burton, "for open scenery, where,
      under a sky of summer blue broken by illuminated cloud-masses,
      the undulating soil reveals its nature through beaten tracks
      and rugged roads with their shelving sides of gold-coloured
      sand, while trees are scattered thinly on the slopes. Or he
      loves the borders of the forest, where mighty tree-trunks,
      smitten by past storms, still extend some gnarled branches
      across the sky, or a fallen stem lies half imbedded amongst
      tall grasses and large-leaved plants. In such scenes Wynants is
      particularly attractive. They give us the poetry of form and
      light, as Ruisdael's deep pine-forests give us that of gloom
      and solitude." Of his life little is known. He was probably
      born about the year 1615, as his earliest pictures bear the
      dates 1641 and 1642. He was still living in 1679, as one of his
      paintings in the Hermitage of St. Petersburg bears that date.
      In October 1642 the registers of St. Luke's Guild at Haarlem
      mention a Jan Wijnants as dealer in works of art; this probably
      refers to the painter. He resided at Haarlem, and afterwards
      at Amsterdam. Wouwerman and A. van de Velde were among his
      scholars, the latter artist and others inserted figures in his
      pictures, for Wynants painted only landscape. The visitor will
      find good examples of him at Dulwich and Hertford House.

The picture is signed (on the trunk of the felled tree) and dated 1659.
The figures in this and the next picture are ascribed to A. van de
Velde.


884. SAND DUNES.

  _Jan Wynants_ (Dutch: about 1615-1679). _See 883._

It is not uninteresting to notice--as strangely in keeping with the
poor and hard country here depicted--that in nearly every picture by
Wynants (see 883, 971, 972) there is a dead tree. That Dutch painters
were alive to the beauties of vegetation, the oaks of Ruysdael are
enough to show; but to Wynants at least nature seems to have been
visible only as a destroying power, as a rugged and conflicting force,
against which the sturdy Hollander had to battle for existence as best
he might.


895. PORTRAIT OF A WARRIOR.

  _Piero di Cosimo_ (Florentine: 1462-1521). _See 698._

Francesco Ferruccio, of whom this is said to be a portrait, was the
Florentine general whose skill and patriotism shed a lustre on the
final struggle of Florence against the combined forces of the Pope and
the Emperor. He was then in command of the outlying possessions of
Florence, and had there been a second Ferruccio within the city itself
the fortune of war might have been different. Francesco was killed in
a battle near Pistoia on August 3, 1530. In the background of this
portrait there is a view of the Piazza della Signoria at Florence; and
at the entrance door Michael Angelo's statue of David, which was placed
there in 1504. The picture was formerly ascribed to Lorenzo Costa;
the recognition of its true authorship is due to Dr. Richter and Dr.
G. Frizzoni. The identification of the warrior with the celebrated
general is considered doubtful by them (see Richter's _Italian Art
in the National Gallery_, p. 36; and Frizzoni's _Arte Italiana del
Rinascimento_, p. 252).


896. THE PEACE OF MÜNSTER.

  _Terburg_ (Dutch: 1617-1681). _See 864._

One of the "gems" of the National Collection--"priceless" because
not only of its great artistic merit, but of its unique historical
interest. It is an exact representation by a contemporary Dutch painter
of one of the turning-points in Dutch history--the ratification,
namely, by the delegates of the Dutch United Provinces, on 15th May
1684, of the Treaty of Münster, with which the eighty years' war
between Spain and the United Provinces was concluded, altogether to
the advantage of the latter. The clerk (in a scarlet cloak) is reading
the document. The plenipotentiaries are standing nearest to the table.
Six of them, holding up the right hand, are the delegates of the
United Provinces; two, with their right hands resting on an open copy
of the Gospels, are the representatives of Spain. One of the Dutch
delegates and one of the Spanish hold copies of the document, which
they follow as it is being read by the clerk. The brass chandelier, it
is interesting to note, still hangs in the hall at Münster. The painter
has introduced his own portrait among the figures on the left, in
three-quarter face, behind the officer who stands with one arm resting
on the chair of the third Dutch delegate (counting from the left).

During his lifetime Terburg did not part with the picture. It passed
at one time into the possession of Prince Talleyrand, and by a curious
coincidence was hanging in the room of his hotel, under the view of the
Allied Sovereigns, at the signing of the treaty of 1814. After several
more changes of hands it was bought in 1868 by the late Marquis of
Hertford for £8800--equivalent, the curious in such things may like
to know, to nearly £24 per square inch of canvas; at his death it
came into the possession of Sir Richard Wallace, who presented it to
the nation in 1871. A curious story is told in this connection. At
the De Morny sale in 1865 the picture had been sold for £1805. At the
San Donato (or Demidoff) sale, three years later, Sir William Boxall,
Director of the National Gallery, bid up to £6000 for it; but his
mandate went no further, and his mortification was great when he found
himself far outbid by the Marquis of Hertford. Three years later,
an unknown gentleman, not too smartly dressed, was announced at the
National Gallery, and began to open a small picture-case. Sir William
was busy, and "could not go into the matter now." "But you had better
just have a glance--I ask no more," said the stranger. Sir William
refused. The stranger insisted. Boxall, struck dumb at the sight of
the picture it had been his dream to add to the National Collection,
raised his eyes to those of the visitor. "My name is Wallace," said
the stranger quietly, "Sir Richard Wallace; and I came to offer this
picture to the National Gallery." "I nearly fainted," said Boxall in
recounting the story; "I had nearly refused 'The Peace of Münster,'
one of the wonders of the world" (M. H. Spielmann: _The Wallace
Collection_, p. 107).


901. A LANDSCAPE.

  _Jan Looten_ (Dutch: about 1618-1681).

      Looten is said to have visited England in the reign of Charles
      II., in order (as a countryman of his explains) "to initiate
      the English into the beauties of Dutch landscape." The process
      was successful, for many large pictures by Looten are (or were)
      in English country-seats. The figures in his landscapes were
      sometimes painted by Berchem.


902. "THE TRIUMPH OF SCIPIO."

  _Andrea Mantegna_ (Paduan: 1431-1506). _See 274._

One of the _grisailles_, or pictures in gray and brown, of which
Mantegna in his later years painted very many, and to multiply which
he took to engraving. In its subject the picture is a piece of ancient
Rome. No other works of the time, it has been said, are so full of
antique feeling as Mantegna's. Botticelli played with the art of the
ancients and modernised it; Mantegna actually lived and moved in it
(Woltmann and Woermann: _History of Painting_, translated by Clara
Bell, ii. 378). Mantegna's classical scholarship, too, is abundantly
shown in the details of this picture, which is full of allusions to
Latin authors and history. The Triumph of Scipio, it may be briefly
explained, consisted in his being selected by the Senate as "the
worthiest man in Rome," by whom alone--so the oracle decreed--must
Cybele, the Phrygian mother of the gods, be received. It was "an
honour," says Livy, with the fine patriotism of Rome, "more to be
coveted than any other which the Senate or people could bestow." On
the left, the image of the goddess is being borne on a litter, and
with it the sacred stone alleged to have fallen from heaven. It was an
unusual fall of meteoric stones that had caused the Romans to consult
the oracle in B.C. 204, during Hannibal's occupation of Italy, and the
oracle had answered that the Phrygian mother must be brought to Rome.
This goddess, worshipped under different forms in many parts of the
world, was a personification of the passive generative power in nature,
and from this time forward she was included among the recognised
divinities of the Roman State. In the centre of the picture Scipio and
his retinue are receiving her; whilst Claudia, a Roman lady, has thrown
herself before the image. Some slur had attached to her reputation, but
she had proved her innocence by invoking the goddess and then drawing
off from a shoal in the harbour of Ostia, with the aid of only a slight
rope, the vessel which bore the sacred image.

"The picture," says Sir F. Burton, "has a history of its own. It was
undertaken towards the close of Mantegna's long and laborious career;
and when that career terminated in the sadness and gloom which have
too often awaited those whose imaginative powers had placed them
above their fellow-men, it remained in his studio, probably not fully
finished. It may have been the last, it was certainly one of the last,
pictures which his pencil touched." An advance payment of 25 ducats had
been made to Mantegna in 1504. His son Francesco made an unsuccessful
claim to it as an inheritance from his father, offering to repay the
amount received in advance. The picture, representing an event glorious
in the history of the Scipios, was commissioned by a Venetian nobleman,
Francesco Cornaro, in order to throw lustre upon the genealogy of his
family, which claimed to belong to the Roman _gens Cornelia_.


903. CARDINAL FLEURY.

  _Hyacinthe Rigaud_ (French: 1659-1743).

      Rigaud was a native of Perpignan, and the son and grandson
      of a painter. In 1681 he went up to Paris, and following
      the advice of Le Brun devoted himself to portraiture. He
      studied diligently the works of Van Dyck, whose disciple
      he always professed to be. He rapidly obtained fame as a
      portrait-painter, but it was not till 1700--on the completion
      of his "St. Andrew" now in the Louvre--that he was admitted as
      an historical painter into the Academy. He held various offices
      in that body, and painted all the great men of his day. His own
      portrait by himself is in the Uffizi.

A portrait of the famous tutor, and afterwards prime minister, of Louis
XV. It is eminently the "pacific Fleury," who strove to keep France
out of war and starved her army and navy when she was forced into it,
that we see in this amiable old gentleman--the scholar and member
of the Academy, who completed what is now the National Library of
France--rather than the statesman. A similar picture is in the Wallace
Collection (No. 130).


904. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Gregorio Schiavone_ (Paduan: painted about 1470). _See 630._


905. THE MADONNA IN PRAYER.

  _Cosimo Tura_ (Ferrarese: 1420-1495). _See 772._

Tura's type of the Madonna is perhaps the least pleasing in the whole
range of Italian art.


906. THE MADONNA IN ECSTASY.

  _Carlo Crivelli_ (Venetian: painted 1468-1493). _See 602._

The latest of Crivelli's dated pictures in the Gallery (1492), and
remarkable for the deep colours which mark the artist's highest powers.
Notice the usual hanging fruit and the pot of roses and carnations.
The Virgin looks up to the Almighty and the dove, while two angels,
with a scroll, support a crown over her head. On the scroll are
inscribed (in Latin) the words, "As I was conceived in the mind of God
from the beginning, so was I also made."

      The masterpiece known as "The Virgin in Ecstasy," rather
      presents (as the text shows) the idea which is the foundation
      of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, combined with
      the "Coronation" of the glorified mother. It is intended, in
      fact, to bring before us not the historical mother of Christ
      so much as that mediæval conception of the mystical being of
      Ecclesiasticus and the Book of Wisdom, existing from all time
      in the mind of God as the instrument of the Incarnation, and
      returning to share the glory of her divine Son. Crivelli has
      expressed with rare distinction that combination of humility
      and awe with a sense of personal dignity which befits this
      ideal of the Virgin. In herself she is an imposing figure,
      but she is absorbed in the divine influences which mould her
      destiny. Never did Crivelli come nearer to the grand style than
      in this magnificent conception (Rushforth's _Crivelli_, p. 75).


907. ST. CATHERINE AND ST. MARY MAGDALENE.

  _Carlo Crivelli_ (Venetian: painted 1468-1493). _See 602._

The figure of St. Mary Magdalene, with the vase of precious ointment,
is characteristic of the painter's more affected style; notice
especially the fingers elongated to the point of grotesqueness.


908. THE NATIVITY OF CHRIST.[193]

  _Piero della Francesca_ (Umbrian: 1416-1492). _See 665._

      "This painting is said to be unfinished. But even minute
      details, such as the pearls on the robes of the angels and on
      the head-dress of the Virgin, have been worked out with an
      accuracy which excites astonishment. One of the two shepherds,
      standing on the right side and seen in front, appears to have
      no pupils to his eyes, and this strange fact might account for
      the theory of the unfinished state of the picture. On the other
      hand it seems to me to have suffered very much from repainting
      in all the flesh parts.... The restorer has, I believe,
      forgotten to paint in the pupils of the shepherd's eyes after
      having destroyed them by the cleaning of the original painting"
      (Richter's _Italian Art in the National Gallery_, pp. 16, 17).
      The beauty of the picture is in the choir of angels with their
      mouths in different attitudes of singing, making such music
      sweet

      As never was by mortal finger strook--
    Divinely-warbled voice
    Answering the stringèd noise,
      As all their souls in blissful rapture took.

  MILTON: _Hymn on Christ's Nativity_.

"The picture is a masterpiece" says Mr. Hipkins, "in musical
delineation. It is the perfectly expressed singing of these
characteristic angels that arrests attention first; but the
archæologist in musical instruments values the two large lutes held by
the outside angels of the group, who are accompanying the singers. The
splendid lines and fine dimensions of these instruments suggest their
sonorous tone. When this picture came from the Barker Collection, each
lute had eleven strings, and the number of pegs in one of them seems
to have this number; but in cleaning the picture the strings have
disappeared. As the picture was not finished by the painter, it is
supposed that the strings were a later addition. However, the number
was right, according to the practice with large lutes at that time, to
give six open notes; the highest, or melody, string being open"[194]
(_The Hobby Horse_, No. 1, 1893). "The figures of the Virgin and Child
are of the gentlest and fairest type, and show undoubted signs of the
Flemish influence, which made itself felt in Florence and throughout
Central Italy after Hugo van der Goes set up his great altar-piece
in the Ospedale of Santa Maria Novella" (W. G. Waters: _Piero della
Francesca_ p. 64).

This picture was formerly in the possession of the Marini-Franceschi
family, of Borgo San Sepolcro, descendants of the painter. The wings
and the predella once belonging to it are in the cathedral of that city.


909. THE MADONNA OF THE WHITE ROSE.

  _Benvenuto da Siena_ (Sienese: 1436-1518).

      The earliest known work by this painter is an Annunciation,
      painted in 1466, in the church of S. Girolamo at Volterra. He
      executed some of the illuminations of the choir-books, and
      designed portions of the pavement, in the cathedral of Siena.
      He was the son of a mason.

A charming combination of older and newer "motives." There is the gold
background, true to the old Sienese traditions, but there are also the
little fiddling angels, so common in Venetian and other pictures of the
time of Benvenuto's later years. In the compartments on either side are
St. Peter, and St. Nicholas of Bari (with various adornments referring
to his story: see under 1171).


910. THE TRIUMPH OF CHASTITY.

  _Luca Signorelli_ (Cortona: 1441-1523). _See under 1128._

In the foreground Cupid on his knees is bound by maidens; in the
distance there are other two groups, in one of which the god of love is
being captured, in the other he is led away in triumph with his arms
pinioned behind him. This painting is a fresco which was transferred
to canvas from the wall of a palace at Siena. It was injured in the
process, and has been badly restored. It is signed LUCAS CORITIUS, and
according to the official catalogue, "the hand of the master is visible
enough in the less damaged parts." According to other authorities, the
inscription is forged, and the picture "a weak production by Genga,"
Signorelli's assistant at Orvieto (Richter's _Italian Art in the
National Gallery_, p. 49).


911. ULYSSES AND PENELOPE.

  _Pinturicchio_ (Umbrian: 1454-1513). _See 693._

Penelope was wife of Ulysses, King of Ithaca, whose wanderings after
the Trojan war are told in Homer's "Odyssey," and shown in summary
in the distance of this picture. Through the open window is seen the
ship of Ulysses, with the hero bound to the mast; the sirens, whose
coasts he passed unhurt, are sporting in the sea; and on an island
near is the palace of Circe, who changed his companions into swine.
In his absence Penelope was beset by many suitors, such as are here
seen clad in joyous raiment, and was in sore straits to resist their
importunity. But "some god put it into my heart to set up a great web
in the halls, and thereat to weave a robe fine of woof and very wide;
and-anon I spake among them, saying: 'Ye princely youths, my wooers,
now that goodly Odysseus is dead, do ye abide patiently, how eager
soever to speed on this marriage of mine, till I finish the robe ...
even this shroud for the hero Laertes, father of Odysseus, against the
day when the deadly doom shall bring him low, of death that lays men at
their length.' ... So spake I, and their high hearts consented thereto.
So then in the daytime I would weave the mighty web, and in the night
unravel the same" (xix. 138-150: Butcher and Lang's translation). And
for the space of three years Penelope's web was still unwoven, and the
suitors were deceived; but afterwards, when they chid her loudly, she
finished the web, and could neither escape marriage nor devise any
further counsel, for that her son too chafed while the suitors devoured
his livelihood. But Ulysses then returned; he is now in the doorway
just entering; and presently Penelope will take down her husband's
bow--now hanging with a quiver of arrows above her head--which the
suitors could not bend, but was bent by Ulysses.

The painter makes no attempt at archæological reconstruction; he gives
us a picture of the costumes of his own day. This vivacious picture is
a fresco transferred to canvas. It was painted in the Pandolfo Petrucci
Palace at Siena, which also Signorelli's "Triumph of Chastity" once
decorated (now 910 in our Gallery).


912, 913, 914. THE STORY OF GRISELDA.

  Umbrian School: 15th-16th century.

On these three panels (formerly ascribed to Pinturicchio),[195] which
were probably destined to serve as decorations to a chest, the story
of Griselda is told with much naïve awkwardness of drawing, but also
with much naïve playfulness of incident. The story, told in Boccaccio's
_Decameron_, and by Petrarch, is also to be found in Chaucer's _Clerkes
Tale_.

In the first picture (912) we see (1) on the extreme left the Marquis
of Saluzzo, who is out hunting with a great retinue. He meets Griselda,
a peasant girl, who is drawing water at the well, and falls in love
with her. Next (2) on the extreme right is her humble barn-like
dwelling, with the marquis serenading his love from below. (3) He
carries her off with him; and note how Griselda, who is to be modest
and humble to the end, hangs her head in "maiden shamefacedness." (4)
Then the marquis has her attired in gold and fine linen, fit for a
prince's bride. Her pattens and perhaps her garters are lying discarded
beside her. And so (5), in the centre of the picture, all is ready for
the wedding:

    This markis hath hir spoused with a ring
    Brought for the same cause, and then hir sette
    Upon an hors, snow-whyt and wel ambling.

Before the second act (913) a few years are supposed to have elapsed.
(1) On the left Griselda's two children--a boy and a girl--(in the
likeness of two very wooden dolls) are being carried off, as if by a
villain in a transpontine tragedy. They are supposed to have since
died miserably. (2) The marquis tires of his love for Griselda, and
is divorced: in the centre of the picture we see her giving back the
wedding ring. (3) Then she is stripped of her fine clothes, and (4)
sent away to her father's house, but

    "The smok," quod he, "that thou hast on thy bak,
    Lat it be stille, and ber it forth with thee."

Two young gallants, in absurd attitudes, look on in half-pitying
amusement, while nearer to us two serving-men are disgusted at the
cruel shame. (5) On the extreme right she is at home again, tending, as
before, her father's sheep.

In the last act (914), a grand banquet is prepared for the marquis's
second wedding, and Griselda is sent for to the castle to do menial
work. On the left we see her sweeping; on the right she is waiting at
table. Then, on the left again, it is discovered that the marquis's new
bride is none other than Griselda's long-lost daughter, accompanied by
her brother. They had all the while been tended in a distant city with
the utmost care. Griselda is thereupon affectionately embraced by her
husband, publicly reinstated in her proper position, and presented to
all the court as a model of wifely obedience and patience--

    No wedded man so hardy be tassaille
    His wyues pacience, in hope to fynde
    Grisildes, for in certein he shal faille!
    O noble wyues, ful of heigh prudènce,
    Lat non humilitee your tongë naille.


915. MARS AND VENUS.

  _Botticelli_ (Florentine: 1447-1510). _See 1034._

So the picture is usually called--Mars, the God of War, asleep, and
the young satyrs playing with his discarded armour, while one of
them attempts to rouse him by blowing a shell. The subject is almost
identical with that which Spenser draws in the _Faërie Queene_, where
Sir Guyon, the Knight of Purity, overthrows the Bower of Bliss in which
Acrasia (or Pleasure) dwells--the last and worst of Sir Guyon's trials,
for "it is harder to fight against pleasure than against pain." Note
especially the expression of the sleeping youth: he is overcome with
brutish paralysis, and they cannot awaken him. Note also the swarm of
hornets issuing from the tree-trunk by his head--significant of the
power that sensual indulgence has of venomously wounding. Visitors who
have been in Venice may remember similar details in Carpaccio's picture
of St. George and the Dragon (J. R. Anderson in _St. Mark's Rest_,
Second Supplement, p. 20).

      Upon a bed of Roses she was layd,
    As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin;
    And was arrayd, or rather disarrayd,
    All in a vele of silke and silver thin,
    That hid no whit her alabaster skin ...
      The young man, sleeping by her, seemd to be
    Some goodly swayne of honorable place,
    That certes it great pitty was to see
    Him his nobility so fowle deface ...
      His warlike armes, the ydle instruments
    Of sleeping praise, were hong upon a tree ...
    Ne for them ne for honour cared hee,
    Ne ought that did to his advauncement tend;
    But in lewd loves, and wastfull luxuree,
    His dayes, his goods, his bodie, he did spend:
    O horrible enchantment, that him so did blend!

  _Faërie Queene_, bk. ii. 12, §§ lxxvii.-lxxx.

It has been suggested by Dr. Richter that the subject of the picture
is not mythological, but an illustration of Angelo Poliziano's poem,
"Stanze per la Giostra," "The Song of the Tournament," written in 1476
in glorification of Giuliano de' Medici, who had entered the lists in
the preceding year, at the tournament given in honour of Simonetta
Cattaneo. In this poem, Giuliano appears as a youth enamoured of the
chase, and contemptuous of women. Cupid determines that he shall fall
a prey to a pair of lovely eyes, and leads him to the presence of
Simonetta. But night falls and Simonetta vanishes, whereupon Venus
sends Giuliano a dream in which he is exhorted to enter the lists in
honour of his lady-love. He foreknows that victory will crown his
arms, and that love will reward his valour, but these joyful tidings
are black with the shadow of death, for early in 1476 Simonetta died.
According to Dr. Richter's interpretation, Giuliano in the picture
before us lies sunk in deepest sleep. The little satyrs are whispering
dreams into his ears, dreams from the realms of Venus. In his dreams,
Giuliano is overcome with fear, because his lady is clad in the armour
of Pallas: he cannot brook the gleam of her helmet and her lance. But
Cupid whispers: "Lift thine eyes, Giuliano, to that flame which with
its radiance blinds thee like a sun; for she it is who quickens noble
minds, and from the breast all evil thoughts expels." He dreams again;
a goddess comes to his aid leading him to battle and to victory. She
divests his lady of the armour of Pallas, and leaves her robed in white
(_Lectures on the National Gallery_, p. 51). The poem[196] may thus be
made to fit the picture. It may, however, be questioned whether the
action of the little Cupids is not more appropriate to the accepted
theory which sees in the armour the discarded weapons of a Mars or a
knight, and Count Plunkett (_Sandro Botticelli_, pp. 44-5) refers to
a passage in Lucian, with whose dialogues Botticelli was familiar.
In describing a picture by Aëtion of the "Nuptials of Alexander and
Roxana," Lucian describes how "on one side of it little Cupids play
among Alexander's armour; two are carrying his spear, as porters do a
heavy beam; two more grasp the handles of a shield, tugging it along
with another reclining on it ... and then another has got into the
breastplate.... All this is not idle fancy, on which the painter has
been lavishing needless pains; he is hinting that Alexander has also
another love, in War."


916. VENUS WITH CUPIDS.

  _School of Botticelli_ (Florentine: 1447-1510). _See 1034._
  _See also_ (p. xx)

The expression of melancholy characteristic of Botticelli's Madonnas
is not absent from his heathen goddesses either. Notice also the
roses--the painter's favourite flower (see 226). This picture is
probably only a work of his school; the figure of the goddess is a
not very successful repetition of the one in 915. The subject of the
picture recalls the description of Simonetta in Poliziano's poem:--

    White is the maid, and white the robe around her,
      With buds and roses and thin grasses pied;
    Enwreathèd folds of golden tresses crowned her,
      Shadowing her forehead fair with modest pride;
    The wild wood smiled; the thicket, where he found her,
      To ease his anguish, bloomed on every side:
    Serene she sits, with gesture queenly mild,
      And with her brow tempers the tempests wild.

  SYMONDS's Translation.


920. ORPHEUS.

  _Roelandt Savery_ (Dutch: 1576-1639).

      Savery, a painter of Courtrai, was instructed by his brother
      at Amsterdam. His works show the influence of Jan Breughel.
      He visited France in the reign of Henry IV., by whom he was
      employed in the royal palaces. He was subsequently invited to
      Prague by the Emperor Rudolph II., in whose service he spent
      several years.

A not very poetical rendering of the poetical legend of the power of
music:--

    You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
    Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze
    By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet
    Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods;
    Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage,
    But music for the time doth change his nature.

  _Merchant of Venice_, Act v. Sc. 1.


923. A VENETIAN SENATOR.

  _Andrea Solario_ (Lombard: about 1460-1520). _See 734._

This picture "was ascribed to Giovanni Bellini before it entered the
National Gallery, and _dilettanti_ might well mistake it for a work of
Antonello da Messina. There seems to be little doubt that the picture
was painted by Solario at Venice, where he went in 1490 in company of
his brother.... The firmly drawn portrait of the senator, with its
minutely executed landscape in the background, reveals plainly that he
there became an ardent follower of Antonello" (Richter's _Italian Art
in the National Gallery_, p. 99).


924. A GOTHIC INTERIOR

  _Pieter Neeffs_ (Flemish: 1577-about 1661).

      This eminent architectural painter belonged to a family of
      Antwerp artists. He was a pupil of Hendrick Steenwyck the
      elder. "He did for the Roman Catholic churches of Antwerp that
      which, thirty years later, and with greater talent, a more
      flowing brush, and a better understanding of chiaro-oscuro,
      Emmanuel de Witte (see 1053) was destined to do for the
      Protestant churches of Delft. Neeffs took special delight
      in the representation of night scenes, torchlight funeral
      services, and the like. Teniers and Velvet Breughel themselves
      often assisted him in these small canvases, thus bearing
      testimony to the high esteem in which Neeffs was held by his
      colleagues" (Wauters, _The Flemish School_, p. 342.)

A group of figures is inspecting a conspicuous Renaissance tomb. Notice
the dogs among the visitors.


927. AN ANGEL ADORING.

  _Filippino Lippi_ (Florentine: 1457-1504). _See 293._

    And with the morn those angel faces smile,
    Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

  CARDINAL NEWMAN.

This exquisite fragment once belonged to Sir Augustus Callcott, R.A.


928. APOLLO AND DAPHNE.

  Ascribed to _Pollajuolo_ (Florentine: 1429-1498). _See 292._

The Greeks, seeing the perpetual verdure of the laurel, personified
it in the story of Apollo and Daphne (= laurel), which told how the
sun-god was enamoured of her. But she, praying to be delivered from
his pursuit, was changed by the gods into a laurel--her two arms are
here sprouting, just as the god has caught her in his embrace; and he,
crowning his head with the leaves, ordained that the tree should for
ever bloom and be sacred to his divinity (see further for the story of
Apollo and Daphne under 520). The fact that Phoebus Apollo was also
the god of song has suggested a pretty adaptation of the legend to the
case of poets who sing for love and earn the laurel wreath--

    Yet, what he sung in his immortal strain,
    Though unsuccessful, was not sung in vain:
    All, but the Nymph that should redress his wrong,
    Attend his passion and approve his song.
    Like Phoebus thus, acquiring unsought praise,
    He catched at love, and filled his arms with bays.

  WALLER.


929. THE "BRIDGEWATER MADONNA."

  _Copy after Raphael._ _See under 1171._

This is an ancient copy, probably by a Flemish painter, of the
original, which is in the possession of the Earl of Ellesmere at
Bridgewater House. It belongs to Raphael's second or Florentine period,
and its exquisite grace has caused it to be known by some writers as
"La Plus Belle des Vierges."


930. THE GARDEN OF LOVE.

  _School of Giorgione_ (Venetian: 16th century). _See 269._

Certainly not by Giorgione,[197] but a characteristic example
of a class of composition of which, as we have seen, he was the
inventor--one of those Venetian pastorals in which young men and women
"disport in the open air, amuse themselves at random" (_Asolando_).


931. THE MAGDALEN.

  _Paolo Veronese_ (Veronese: 1528-1588). _See 26._

The Magdalen--she who had sinned much, but who was forgiven because
she loved much--is represented at the Saviour's feet, laying aside her
jewels, and thus renouncing the vanities of the world.


932. A KNIGHT OF MALTA.

  _Unknown_ (Italian: 16th century).

Formerly ascribed to Sebastiano del Piombo.


933. BOY WITH A BIRD.

  _Padovanino_ (Venetian: 1590-1650). _See 70._

Contrast with this child caressing a dove Baroccio's Christ teasing
a bird. Padovanino lived much at Venice, and shared perhaps the
Venetian's fondness for pigeons--the sacred birds of St. Mark's, which
are kept and fed in the great square to this day at the public charge.


934. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Carlo Dolci_ (Florentine: 1616-1686).

      Carlo Dolci, the son of a Florentine tailor, is, like his
      contemporary Sassoferrato, a good instance of the affected
      religious school described in our introduction to the
      Later Italian Schools. He was of a very retiring and pious
      disposition, much given, we are told, to melancholy. Every one
      who looks first at the pictures of similar subjects by earlier
      Italian artists will be struck by something sentimental and
      effeminate in Dolci's conceptions. Similarly in his execution
      there is an over-smoothness and softness, corresponding to
      "polished" language in literature (see _Modern Painters_, vol.
      iii. pt. iv. ch. ix. § 7). In the Dulwich Gallery is a St.
      Catherine of Siena which is one of Dolci's _chefs d'oeuvre_.


935. A RIVER SCENE.

  _Salvator Rosa_ (Neapolitan: 1615-1673). _See 84._


936. THE FARNESE THEATRE, PARMA.

  _Ferdinando Bibiena_ (Bolognese: 1657-1743).

      Ferdinando Galli, called Bibiena, was one of a family of
      artists who came from a place of that name in the Bolognese
      State. He was a celebrated architect and scenic artist. He
      was engaged at many of the European courts in the arrangement
      of state pageants. He executed several works for Ranuccio
      Farnese, Duke of Parma. His architectural and perspective views
      are to be seen in the principal galleries in Italy. In these
      the figures are usually painted by his brother Francesco.
      Ferdinando, who published several works on architecture, became
      blind in his old age.

A scene in the theatre with _Othello_ being played. The pit is
unseated; it is a kind of "promenade play."


937. VENICE: SCUOLA DI SAN ROCCO.

  _Canaletto_[198] (Venetian: 1697-1768). _See 127._

The principal building is the Scuola of the religious fraternity of St.
Roch--"an interesting building of the early Renaissance (1517), passing
into Roman Renaissance," and, "as regards the pictures it contains (by
Tintoret), one of the three most precious buildings in Italy" (_Stones
of Venice_, Venetian Index). From the adjoining Church of St. Roch, the
Holy Thursday procession of the Doges and Officers of State, together
with the members of the Fraternity, is advancing under an awning on
its way to St. Mark's. Notice the carpets hung out of the windows--a
standing feature, this, in Venetian gala decorations from very early
times (see, for instance, No. 739).[199] Notice, also, the pictures
displayed in the open air--a feature which well illustrates the
difference between the later "easel pictures" and the earlier pictures
intended to serve as architectural decorations. "A glance at this
picture is sufficient to show how utterly the ordinary oil painting
fails when employed as an architectural embellishment. Pictures which
were to adorn and form part of a building had to consist of figures,
separated one from another, all standing in simple and restful
attitudes, and all plainly relieved against a light ground" (Conway:
_Early Flemish Artists_, p. 270). Apart from one of the conditions of
early art thus suggested, the picture is interesting as showing how in
the eighteenth century in Italy, as in the thirteenth, art was part and
parcel of the life of the people. Cimabue's pictures were carried in
procession; and here in Canaletto's we see Venetian "old masters" hung
out to assist in the popular rejoicing.


938. VENICE: REGATTA ON THE GRAND CANAL.

  _Canaletto_ (Venetian: 1697-1768). _See 127._

A state regatta--a pastime which owes its origin to Venice--in honour
of the visit to the city of the King of Denmark in 1709. In the centre
of the canal are the gondoliers, racing; to the sides are moored the
spectators, the gala barges of the nobles conspicuous amongst them.
The variegated building on the left is a temporary pavilion for the
distribution of prizes. These regattas at Venice took the place of our
royal processions here. "Wherever the eye turned, it beheld a vast
multitude at doorways, on the quays, and even on the roofs. Some of the
spectators occupied scaffoldings erected at favourable points along the
sides of the canal; and the patrician ladies did not disdain to leave
their palaces, and, entering their gondolas, lose themselves among the
infinite number of the boats" (_Feste Veneziane_: quoted in Howells's
_Venetian Life_, ii. 69). Another custom in which we have begun to
imitate the Venetians, and which may be seen in this picture, is that
of hanging out carpets and stuffs by way of decorations. "The windows
and balconies," says the same account, "were decked with damasks,
stuffs of the Levant, tapestries, and velvets;" a very old Venetian
custom: see under 937.


939, 940. VENICE: THE PIAZZETTA, AND THE DUCAL PALACE.

  _Canaletto_ (Venetian: 1697-1768). _See 127._

Canaletto's representation of the central spot of Venice. In 939 is
the Piazzetta, the little Piazza or square, in front the church of
St. Mark, with its bell towers; on the left are the mint and library;
on the right is the ducal palace. This appears again in 940, with the
famous column of St. Mark, patron saint of Venice, while beyond it is
the Ponte della Paglia, the prisons, and the Riva degli Schiavoni.


941. VENICE: THE GRIMANI PALACE.

  _Canaletto_ (Venetian: 1697-1768). _See 127._

This palace, situated on the Grand Canal and used until lately as the
post-office, was built in the sixteenth century by San Micheli, and is
"the principal type at Venice, and one of the best in Europe, of the
central architecture of the Renaissance schools--that carefully studied
and perfectly executed architecture to which those schools owe their
principal claim to our respect, and which became the model of most of
the important works subsequently produced by civilised nations.... It
is composed of three stories of the Corinthian order (_i.e._ in which
the ornament is concave, distinguished from Doric, in which it is
convex), at once simple, delicate, and sublime; but on so colossal a
scale that the three-storied palaces on its right and left only reach
to the cornice which marks the level of its first floor" (_Stones of
Venice_, vol. iii. ch. ii. §§ 1, 2). Buildings in the same style in
London are St. Paul's and Whitehall.


942. ETON COLLEGE.

  _Canaletto_ (Venetian: 1697-1768). _See under 127._

Painted during the artist's first English visit, 1746-1748, perhaps in
the same year (1747) that Gray published his well-known ode--

    Ye distant spires, ye antique towers
      That crown the watery glade,
    Where grateful Science still adores
      Her Henry's holy shade.


943. A PORTRAIT.

  _Unknown_ (Early Flemish: 15th century).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

This portrait, which is dated 1462, was formerly supposed to be
Memlinc's portrait of himself, in the costume of the Hospital of St.
John at Bruges, but is now called by others Bouts's own portrait. "It
is," says Sir W. Armstrong (_Notes on the National Gallery_, p. 28),
"pretty surely the work of Dirck Bouts. Compare it with the Madonna
numbered 774, and ascribed to Van der Goes. In conception, in chord
of colour, in technical manner, the similarity is so complete between
them as to leave room, in my mind, for very little doubt as to the
identity of their authors. And this Madonna is by Dirck Bouts, as no
one who has examined his 'Last Supper' in the Church of St. Pierre at
Louvain can doubt.... Sir Martin Conway, who was the first, I fancy, to
recognise Bouts in all three of these pictures, drew my attention to a
curious peculiarity of his: he goes out of his way to paint hands. In
his 'Last Supper' many hands are displayed that might quite naturally
have been hidden, and we find the same thing in this portrait." Whether
of Memlinc or of Bouts, the face bespeaks a gentle, humble, pious,
laborious soul. The painting of the hair is especially remarkable.
It is touched with the utmost minuteness, and yet the silky, flowing
texture is conveyed with the utmost freedom. This picture was formerly
in the possession of Samuel Rogers.


944. TWO USURERS.

  _Marinus van Romerswael_ (Flemish: about 1497-1573).

      Marinus of Romerswael (his birthplace), also called "de Zeeuw"
      (the Zeelander), was fond of this subject, the composition of
      which he seems to have borrowed from Quentin Metsys, by whom
      also similar pictures are common. In early life Marinus was
      apprenticed to a glass-painter at Antwerp. Nothing is known of
      his later life till towards its close, when he was residing
      at Middelburg. "There, in 1566, in an iconoclastic outburst
      of the populace, the churches of the town were wrecked; and
      Marinus was accused before the tribunals of taking part in the
      spoliation of the Westmonsterkerk. Being held guilty, he was
      condemned on the 25th of June 1567 to perform an ignominious
      public penance and to be banished from Middelburg for the
      space of six years. An aged man then, he can scarcely have
      survived his term of exile" (see authorities cited in the
      Official Catalogue).

One inserts items in a ledger; the other puzzles over the particulars
of some business transaction. It is a powerful realisation of what
Ruskin calls the New Beatitude, "Blessed are the merciless, for they
shall obtain money." "The picture is remarkable," says Sir Edward
Poynter, "not only for its marvellous finish, and the energy of the
expressions, but for its luminous quality and the purity of the colour."


945. ST. AGNES ADORING.

  _Joachim Patinir_ (Early Flemish: died 1524). _See 715._

St. Agnes, the young martyr virgin,--attired as a

      Pensive nun, devout and pure,
    Sober, steadfast, and demure,--

kneels before the infant Christ, "for knowest thou not that Agnes has
been a Christian from her infancy upwards, and the husband to whom she
is betrothed is no other than Jesus Christ?" The infant Christ holds a
coral rosary in his hand, for he would crown her with jewels compared
with which all earthly gifts are as dross. "It chanced that the son of
the prefect of Rome beheld her one day as he rode through the city,
and became violently enamoured, and desired to have her for his wife.
He asked her in marriage of her parents, but the maiden repelled all
his advances. Then he brought rich presents, bracelets of gold and
gems, and rare jewels and precious ornaments, and promised her all the
delights of the world if she would consent to be his wife. But she
rejected him and his gifts, saying, Away from me, tempter! for I am
already betrothed to a lover who is greater and fairer than any earthly
suitor. To him I have pledged my faith, and he will crown me with
jewels, compared to which thy gifts are dross" (MRS. JAMESON: _Sacred
and Legendary Art_, p. 356.)


946. A MAN'S PORTRAIT.

  _Mabuse_ (Flemish: about 1470-1541). _See 656._

On the back of this picture is the brand of Charles I., a crown with C.
R.


947. A PORTRAIT.

  _Unknown_ (Flemish School).

Formerly hung with the French pictures. Now ascribed to the Flemish
School of the 15th or early 16th century.


948. LANDSCAPE: A SKETCH.

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


949. LANDSCAPE WITH GIPSIES.


950. VILLAGE GOSSIPS.


951. THE GAME OF BOWLS.

  _David Teniers, the elder_ (Flemish: 1582-1649).

      This artist is less memorable for his own works, which are
      mediocre, than as the founder of a family of painters (see
      Wauters: _The Flemish School_, p. 299), and the father of the
      celebrated David Teniers (the younger). He was a member of
      the Antwerp Guild of Painters, but spent ten years at Rome,
      where he came under the influence of Adam Elsheimer. The elder
      Teniers was the master of his son, who carried on his style,
      so that it is not always easy to distinguish their several
      pictures. In their own time father and son were equally
      appreciated. There is a large number of works by the elder
      Teniers in the Dulwich Gallery. On the whole they are browner
      in tone than those of the younger painter.


952. "THE VILLAGE FÊTE."

  _David Teniers_ (Flemish: 1610-1694). _See_ 154.

So the picture is usually called, but the subject seems rather to be
a pilgrimage to some holy shrine or miraculous well. A cross is seen
on the right; the priest in charge of the pilgrimage stands somewhat
lower down; on the left is a man selling little memorial flags with
crosses on them. The hungry travellers are waiting for the meal which
is being prepared for them in several huge cauldrons. The town of
Antwerp is seen in the distance. This picture, dated 1643, is among the
best works of Teniers, and includes 150 figures. "Truth in physiognomy,
distribution of groups, the beautiful effect of light and shade,
command," says Hymans, "our warmest admiration." In the foreground are
Teniers and his party, with his little boy leading a greyhound, and the
girl of this party is almost the only pleasant face in the picture.
The painter, one begins to suspect, had not much real sympathy with
his "village scenes" after all; and perhaps the demand for such scenes
on the part of his aristocratic patrons was only a kind of vicarious
"slumming"--an anticipation of the fashionable craze of a later age.


953. THE TOPER.

  _David Teniers_ (Flemish: 1610-1694). _See 154._

This picture is signed with a T. within a D., which is the signature of
the elder Teniers.

    But, lo, a Teniers woos, and not in vain,
    Your eyes to revel in a livelier sight:
    His bell-mouth'd goblet makes one feel quite Danish,
    Or Dutch, with thirst--what, ho! a flask of Rhenish.--BYRON.


954. A LANDSCAPE.

  _Cornelis Huysmans_ (Flemish: 1648-1727).

      This painter, whose pictures have for the most part become very
      dark, was born at Antwerp, the son of an architect. He studied
      the art of landscape under Jacques d'Arthois at Brussels, by
      which master we are told he was kept so closely to drawing that
      he could only practise painting by night. He took up his abode
      at Mechlin; but in 1702 removed to Antwerp, returning, however,
      to Mechlin fourteen years later. Favourable examples of his
      work may be seen at the Louvre.


955. WOMEN BATHING.

  _Cornelis van Poelenburgh_ (Dutch: 1586-1667).

      This painter was a native of Utrecht, where he studied under
      A. Bloemaert. He afterwards visited Italy and Rome, where he
      was in 1617, and where he studied the works of Elsheimer.
      He generally painted Italian landscapes, which he peopled
      with nude figures, goddesses, nymphs bathing, or antique
      shepherdesses. These works hit the taste of Royal and Grand
      Ducal patrons throughout Europe. On quitting Rome for Florence,
      he was employed by the Grand Duke. In 1627 he returned to
      Utrecht, whither his fame had preceded him. Rubens is said to
      have visited him, and Van Dyck painted his portrait. He was
      invited also to London, and was employed both by Charles I.
      and James II. He was on three occasions appointed Dean of the
      Painters' Guild at Utrecht, where he died. He frequently helped
      his fellow landscape painters by inserting figures for them.
      Those in Both's "Judgment of Paris" (No. 209) are by him.


956. AN ITALIAN LANDSCAPE.


957. GOATHERDS.


958. OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF ROME.


959. A RIVER SCENE.

  _Jan Both_ (Dutch: 1610-1662). _See 71._


960. THE WINDMILLS.

  _Cuyp_ (Dutch: 1620-1691). _See 53._


961. DORT (THE "LARGE DORT").


962. DORT (THE "SMALL DORT").

  _Cuyp_ (Dutch: 1620-1691). _See 53._

Groups of Cuyp's favourite cows in the foreground. In the distance the
Groote Kerk of Dordrecht, with its handsome tower.


963. A SKATING SCENE.

  _Isaac van Ostade_ (Dutch: 1621-1649). _See 847._

A scene such as Isaac van Ostade specially loved. (See Pater's
_Imaginary Portraits_, cited under 1137.)


964. A RIVER SCENE.


965. RIVER SCENE WITH STATE BARGE.


966. A RIVER SCENE.


967. DUTCH SHIPPING.

  _Jan van de Cappelle_ (Dutch: painted 1650-1680). _See 865._


968. THE PAINTER'S WIFE.

  _Gerard Dou_ (Dutch: 1613-1675). _See 192._


969. A FROST SCENE.

  _Aart van der Neer_ (Dutch: 1603-1677) _See 152._


970. THE DROWSY LANDLADY.

  _Gabriel Metsu_ (Dutch: 1630-1667). _See 838._


971, 972. LANDSCAPES.

  _Jan Wynants_ (Dutch: about 1615-1679). _See 883._


973. SANDBANK.

  _Wouwerman_ (Dutch: 1619-1668). _See 878._

Formerly ascribed to Jan Wynants.


974. LANDSCAPE.

  _Philip de Koninck_ (Dutch: 1619-1688). _See 836._

A view of the Scheldt and Antwerp Cathedral in the distance.


975. THE STAG HUNT.


976. A BATTLE.

  _Wouwerman_ (Dutch: 1619-1668). _See 878._

In Wouwerman's battle-pieces, says Ruskin, there is "nothing but animal
rage and cowardice"--with which he contrasts the noble battle-piece by
Paolo Uccello (583). "It is very singular," he adds, "that unmitigated
expressions of cowardice in battle should be given by the painters of
so brave a nation as the Dutch. Not but that it is possible enough
for a coward to be stubborn, and a brave man weak; the one may win his
battle by blind persistence, and the other lose it by a thoughtful
vacillation. Nevertheless, the want of all expression of resoluteness
in Dutch battle-pieces remains, for the present, a mystery to me. In
those of Wouwerman, it is only a natural development of his perfect
vulgarity in all respects" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch.
viii. §§ 8-10).


977. A SEA-PIECE.

  _W. van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707). _See 149._


978. A RIVER SCENE.

  _W. van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707). _See 149._

A state barge in the centre; trumpeters sounding a salute on either
side in other vessels.


979. A STIFF BREEZE.

  _W. van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707). _See 149._


980. DUTCH SHIPS OF WAR.

  _W. van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707). _See 149._

"The best example we have of the painter--a delightful picture. The sky
is so delicate and unobtrusive that it does not expose his weakness
in cloud drawing" (J. Brett, A.R.A., on "Landscape at the National
Gallery," in _Fortnightly Review_, April 1895).


981. A STORM AT SEA.

  _W. van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707). _See 149._

See also under 819. This picture is signed (on a floating spar) and
dated London 1673.


982. A FOREST SCENE (dated 1658).


983. A BAY HORSE (dated 1663).


984. LANDSCAPE WITH CATTLE.

  _A. van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1636-1672). _See 867._


985. SHEEP AND GOATS.

  _Karel du Jardin_ (Dutch: 1622-1678). _See 826._


986. THE WATERMILLS.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See 627._


987. A ROCKY TORRENT.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See 627._


988. AN OLD OAK.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See 627._


989. WATERMILLS, WITH BLEACHERS.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See 627._

See note to No. 44.


990. A WOODED PROSPECT.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See 627._

"This picture with its large shadows sweeping over the landscape and
its faint gleams of sunlight, suggesting an imminent rain-storm, is one
of Ruysdael's most poetical works" (Poynter: _The National Gallery_,
ii. 174).


991. THE BROKEN TREE.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See 627._


992. ARCHITECTURAL SCENE.

  _Jan van der Heyden_ (Dutch: 1637-1712). _See 866._

Classic _v._ Gothic. An interesting picture of the architectural
tendency of the time--the classical Palladian architecture of stone
rising over the ruins of the red brick Gothic of earlier times. The
same mixture of the old and the new--in juxtaposition not altogether
unlike what is here represented--may be seen in the town of Abingdon
(Berks), where Inigo Jones's market-hall, built about the time of this
picture, towers above the red bricks of the humbler and earlier styles.


993. A HOUSE AMONG TREES.


994. A STREET IN A TOWN.

  _Jan van der Heyden_ (Dutch: 1637-1712). _See 866._


995. A WOODY LANDSCAPE.

  _Hobbema_ (Dutch: 1638-1709). _See 685._


996. A CASTLE IN A ROCKY LANDSCAPE.

  _Hobbema_ (Dutch: 1638-1709). _See 685._

Signed, and dated 1667.


997. SCOURING THE KETTLE

  _Godfried Schalcken_ (Dutch: 1643-1706). _See 199._

In pictures of this kind by Dou and his followers you fancy, it has
been said, that "you see and hear the very grit as it cuts into the
yellow metal."


998. SINGING A DUET.

  _Godfried Schalcken_ (Dutch: 1643-1706). _See 199._

A lover holds a guitar, his mistress some music; on the table is a
rose--

    If love were what the rose is,
      And I were like the leaf,
    Our lives would grow together
    In sad or singing weather....
    If love were what the rose is
      And I were like the leaf.

  SWINBURNE: _A Match_.


999. BY CANDLE-LIGHT.

  _Godfried Schalcken_ (Dutch: 1643-1706). _See 199._

"To give the most natural effect to his candle-light pieces, Schalcken
is said to have adopted the following system:--He placed the object he
intended to paint in a dark room, with a candle, and looking through
a small hole, painted by day what he saw by candle-light" (_Bryan's
Dictionary_).


1000. THE ESTUARY OF A RIVER.

  _Bakhuizen_ (Dutch: 1631-1708). _See 204._


1001. HOLLYHOCKS AND OTHER FLOWERS.

  _Jan van Huysum_ (Dutch: 1682-1749). _See 796._

Notice the snail crawling along in front.


1002. FLOWERS, INSECTS, AND FRUIT.

  _Jacob Walscappelle_ (Dutch: painted about 1675).

      A painter of fruit and flowers in the style of de Heem. His
      flowers are generally arranged in water-bottles, and are
      besprinkled with butterflies and other insects. He painted at
      Amsterdam from about 1667 to 1718.


1003. DEAD PARTRIDGES AND OTHER BIRDS.

  _Jan Fyt_ (Flemish: 1611-1661).

      Fyt--painter and etcher of animals--was a pupil of Snyders,
      whom in some respects he excelled. The sale catalogues of the
      greater part of the nineteenth century show that his works
      were little appreciated, but recent criticism has given him a
      very high place among the animal and still-life painters of
      his country. "Fyt's work," says Sir F. Burton, "is perfect in
      its kind, exhibiting the finest observation of nature, and an
      execution which unites the greatest mastery with the utmost
      delicacy. His composition is unconstrained, and the colouring
      and tone of his pictures are most pleasing." He was born at
      Antwerp, where, after some years' residence in Italy, he became
      Dean of the Painters' Guild.


1004. AN ITALIAN LANDSCAPE.

  _Nicolas Berchem_ (Dutch: 1620-1683). _See 78._


1005. PLOUGHING.

  _Nicolas Berchem_ (Dutch: 1620-1683). _See 78._

"There is in this small picture," says Sir Edward Poynter, "a genuine
feeling for nature, which is generally somewhat wanting in the works
of Berchem, whose manner, founded on the study of Italian landscape
art, gives frequently an artificial effect to his composition"
(_National Gallery_, i. 44).


1006. HURDY-GURDY.

  _Nicolas Berchem_ (Dutch: 1620-1683). _See 78._

Berchem, as we have seen, was an "Italianiser," and here introduces us
to one of the exports of that country--

    Far from England, in the sunny
      South, where Anio leaps in foam,
    Thou wast reared, till lack of money
      Drew thee from thy vine-clad home.

  CALVERLEY: _Fly Leaves_.


1007. A ROCKY LANDSCAPE.

  _Jan Wils_ (Dutch: about 1600-1670).

      Wils, whose pictures are seldom met with, "would appear, from
      the style of most of his works, to have studied under Jan
      Both at Utrecht.... He was the father-in-law and one of the
      teachers of Nicolas Berchem, between whose works and some of
      those of Wils (as, for instance, the present picture) a great
      resemblance may be traced" (Official Catalogue).

The figures in this picture are supposed to have been put in by
Wouwerman.


1008. A STAG HUNT.

  _Pieter Potter_ (Dutch: 1597-1652).

      Pieter Potter, the father of Paul Potter, was a native of
      Enkhuizen, and originally painted on glass. In one of his early
      signatures (1628) he describes himself as "glass annealer,
      also painter." Later on, he settled at Amsterdam and was
      director of a manufactory of gilt leather there. He formed his
      style, we are told, under the influence of Frans Hals, and
      painted various subjects, such as scenes in the guard-house,
      still-life, and landscape.


1009. THE OLD GRAY HUNTER.

  _Paul Potter_ (Dutch: 1625-1654). _See 849._


1010. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE.

  _Dirk van Delen_ (Dutch: 1607-1673).

      This painter was born at Heusden. He lived at Arnemuiden in
      Zealand, of which town he was burgomaster. He worked also at
      Haarlem, Delft, and Antwerp.

A picture by a rare master--interesting to students of the history
of architectural taste. In 992 we are shown the struggle between the
old Gothic style and the new Renaissance architecture; here we see
the full victory of the latter. Dirk van Delen loved to depict the
costly and variegated marbles on splendid palaces in the style of the
late Renaissance. He will not be defrauded, even by considerations of
distance, of any of his details, and every statue and ornament is shown
us as minutely as if it were on the level of the eye. The classical
style has pervaded too the fountain; note the gilt bronze group of
Hercules and the Hydra.


1011. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Coques_ (Flemish: 1618-1684). _See 821._

A faithful imitation on a reduced scale of Van Dyck's ideal of
feminine "elegance." There is a certain artificial simplicity very
characteristic of the time, in the combination of the lady, with her
sumptuous white satin and the elaborate architecture behind her, and
her pet lamb.


1012. PORTRAIT OF A MAN.

  _Matthew Merian, the younger_ (Swiss: 1621-1687).

      This painter was the son of Matthew Merian, the elder, an
      eminent Swiss draughtsman and engraver. The father had
      established himself at Frankfort as a book and print seller,
      and on his death in 1650, the son assumed management of the
      business, and continued the publication of the "Theatrum
      Europæum," for which he arranged several plates. But the
      younger Merian was best known as a painter. He was born at
      Bâle, and at the age of 14 came to Frankfort, where he learnt
      to paint under Joachim van Sandrart, whom he accompanied to
      Amsterdam in 1637 and to England in 1640. In this country he
      came into friendly relations with Van Dyck, whom he took as
      his model in the art of portraiture. Merian also travelled in
      France and Italy. As a portrait-painter he was much patronised
      by the German princes and also by the Emperor Leopold I. He
      also painted religious and historical pictures, such as the
      "Martyrdom of St. Lawrence," for the high altar of Bamberg
      Cathedral, and the "Resurrection," in the Library of Bâle.

This picture was formerly ascribed to Van Dyck. The man's dress is of
black velvet, of the fashion of about 1665-70.


1013. GEESE AND DUCKS.

  _Melchior de Hondecoeter_ (Dutch: 1636-1695). _See 202._


1014. THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. LAWRENCE.

  _Adam Elsheimer_ (German: 1578-1620).

      Elsheimer was the son of a tailor at Frankfort-on-Maine. He
      himself settled in Rome. "He inherited with his northern blood
      an intense love of nature and her varied aspects. Upon this
      he engrafted a careful study of the human form, and in Italy
      he profited by the example of the great masters of preceding
      generations. Thus, aided by a certain homely imagination, he
      formed a style of his own, combining landscape and figure
      in such a manner that each was the necessary complement of
      the other, and that subject and situation were in perfect
      harmony. The lonely, and at that time, wooded, depressions of
      the Roman Campagna, and the hills of Albano and Tivoli, were
      his favourite haunts, and in their scenery his imagination
      placed events in biblical or mythological story. He loved
      especially to paint the strange effects produced by diverse
      sources of illumination. The novelty of his aims, the beauty
      of his execution, and the geniality of his disposition,
      gained him admirers and friends" (Official Catalogue). His
      contemporaries Sandrart and Cornelius de Bie describe him as
      an extraordinary artist who had "a peculiar manner of his
      own. He was, indeed, the first who invented a style of small
      sceneries, landscapes, and other curiosities." He possessed,
      we are told, so extraordinary a memory, that it was sufficient
      for him to have looked at an object or scene once to draw it
      with the utmost precision. The extreme patience and labour with
      which he finished his pictures were such that the prices he
      received never sufficiently repaid him. Had he been paid but
      a fourth part of what his works have since produced, he might
      have lived in affluence instead of indigence and distress.
      Elsheimer usually painted on copper (as is the case with this
      picture). His etchings and drawings are well known; in the
      Städel Institute of his native town there is a large collection
      of them. There are also some in the British Museum. Elsheimer's
      works had a considerable influence on many succeeding Dutch
      painters. "Elsheimer," says Mr. Colvin in his Guide to the
      British Museum Drawings, "fills a very important part in art as
      the forerunner on the one hand of Claude and his group, by his
      delight in the composition and massing of the forms of hill,
      plain, and grove in the country round Rome, and on the other
      hand of Rembrandt and _his_ group, by his predilection for
      strong artificial contrasts of light, and for the dramatic and
      speaking action of his figures."

St. Lawrence (for whose legend see 747) is being prepared for
martyrdom. Beside him there is an image of Cæsar, unto whom will be
rendered Cæsar's due--the saint's life; but over his head is an angel
from heaven, for unto God will go the saint's soul. The emperor is
crowned on earth; the angel brings the saint a palm branch, an earnest
of the martyr's crown in heaven.


1015. FRUIT, FLOWERS, AND DEAD BIRDS.

  _Jan van Os_ (Dutch: 1744-1808).

      Born at Middelharnis, a most distinguished flower-painter in
      the manner of Van Huysum. He also painted marine pieces and
      wrote poetry. His wife drew portraits in chalk, and his two
      sons were painters.

Prominent amongst the flowers is the red cockscomb. A picture by the
most distinguished flower-painter of his time, and characteristic, in
an interesting particular, of Dutch pictures of this kind generally.
"If the reader has any familiarity with the galleries of painting
in the great cities of Europe, he cannot but retain a clear, though
somewhat monotonously calm, impression of the character of those
polished flower-pieces, or still-life pieces, which occupy subordinate
corners, and invite to moments of repose, or frivolity, the attention
and imagination which have been wearied in admiring the attitudes of
heroism, and sympathising with the sentiments of piety. Recalling to
his memory the brightest examples of these ... he will find that all
the older ones agree--if flower-pieces--in a certain courtliness and
formality of arrangement, implying that the highest honours which
flowers can attain are in being wreathed into grace of garlands, or
assembled in variegation of bouquets, for the decoration of beauty, or
flattery of _noblesse_. If fruit or still-life pieces, they agree no
less distinctly in directness of reference to the supreme hour when the
destiny of dignified fruit is to be accomplished in a royal dessert;
and the furred and feathered life of hill and forest may bear witness
to the Wisdom of Providence by its extinction for the kitchen dresser.
Irrespectively of these ornamental virtues, and culinary utilities, the
painter never seems to perceive any conditions of beauty in the things
themselves, which would make them worth regard for their own sake:
nor, even in these appointed functions, are they ever supposed to be
worth painting, unless the pleasures they procure be distinguished as
those of the most exalted society" (_Notes on Prout and Hunt_, pp. 10,
11, where Ruskin goes on to contrast with this Dutch ideal the simple
pleasure in the flowers and fruits for their own sake which marks W.
Hunt's still-life drawings).

Observe, as further characteristic of Dutch fruit-pieces, the
butterfly, the fly, and the earwig: "There was a further _tour de
force_ demanded of the Dutch workman, without which all his happiest
preceding achievements would have been unacknowledged. Not only a
dew-drop, but, in some depth of bell or cranny of leaf, a bee, or a
fly, was necessary for the complete satisfaction of the connoisseur. In
the articulation of the fly's legs, or neurology of the bee's wings,
the genius of painting was supposed to signify her accepted disciples;
and their work went forth to the European world, thenceforward, without
question, as worthy of its age and country. But, without recognising
in myself, or desiring to encourage in my scholars, any unreasonable
dislike or dread of the lower orders of living creatures, I trust
that the reader will feel with me that none of Mr. Hunt's peaches or
plums would be made daintier by the detection on them of even the most
cunningly latent wasp, or cautiously rampant caterpillar; and will
accept, without so much opposition as it met with forty years ago, my
then first promulgated, but steadily since repeated assertion, that the
'modern painter' had in these matters less vanity than the ancient one,
and better taste" (_ib._ pp. 14, 15).


1016. A PORTRAIT OF A GIRL.

  _Sir Peter Lely_ (Dutch: 1617-1680).

      Lely, the court painter of the reign of Charles II., by whom
      he was knighted, was a native of Holland; his father's name
      was Van der Vaes, but the son took the nickname of Le Lys or
      Lely (from the lily with which the front of his father's house
      was ornamented) as a surname. He was born in Westphalia, but
      settled in England in 1641, the year of Van Dyck's death, on
      whom he modelled his style. It was Lely who is said to have
      painted Cromwell, "warts and all," but he easily accommodated
      himself to the softer manners of the Restoration. The rich
      curls, the full lips, and the languishing eyes of the frail
      beauties of Charles II. may be seen at Hampton Court. Lely
      was "a mighty proud man," says Pepys, "and full of state."
      The painting of great ladies was a lucrative business, and
      his collection of drawings and pictures sold at his death for
      £26,000, a sum which bore a greater proportion to the fortunes
      of the rich men of that day than £100,000 would bear to the
      fortunes of the rich men of our time. He was struck with
      apoplexy while painting the Duchess of Somerset, and was buried
      at St. Paul's, Covent Garden.

The courtly affectation which distinguishes Lely's portraits is not
absent from this little girl. She is feeding the parrot, but obviously
takes no interest in it--not even troubling indeed to look at it. Her
concern seems to be only to hold up her flowing frock (or "simar")
prettily and to point her fingers gracefully.


1017. A WOODY LANDSCAPE.

  _Unknown_ (Flemish: dated 1622).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

The landscape is probably by Josse Mompers, an Antwerp artist who lived
1564-1635.


1018. A CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE.

  _Claude Lorraine_ (French: 1600-1682). _See 2._

A characteristic example of Claude's "classical compositions" as
described in our chapter on the French School. It is one of his late
works, being dated 1673; the names of Anchises and Æneas occur.


1019. THE HEAD OF A GIRL.

  _Greuze_ (French: 1725-1805). _See 206._

    I will paint her as I see her....
    With a forehead fair and saintly,
      Which two blue eyes under-shine,
      Like meek prayers before a shrine.

    Face and figure of a child,--
      Though too calm, you think, and tender,
      For the childhood you would lend her.

  Mrs. BROWNING: _A Portrait_.


1020. GIRL WITH AN APPLE.

  _Greuze_ (French: 1725-1805). _See 206._

    A cloud of yellow hair
    Is round about her ear.
    She hath a mouth of grace,
    And forehead sweet and fair.

  AUSTIN DOBSON: _A Song of Angiola_.


1021. PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN.

  _Frans Hals_ (Dutch: 1580-1666).

      Among the Dutch portrait-painters, Hals stands second only to
      Rembrandt, while for mastery of the brush he is second only
      to Velazquez. Though born in Antwerp and a pupil of Karel van
      Mander (the Flemish painter and biographer), Hals is claimed
      as a member of the Dutch School, inasmuch as his father was
      settled at Haarlem in Holland, and he himself lived and worked
      there. In style, "though his vigorous drawing recalls by its
      boldness the masterly method of Rubens, his manner of giving
      to his work a sustained light, his style of composition, and
      the choice of his subject, place him unmistakably in the Dutch
      School.... No one, either before or after him, ever attained
      the marvellous exactness with which he places flesh tints in
      juxtaposition, without their mixing together, just as they
      come from the palette.... No artist ever manipulated his
      brush with such firmness, freedom, and life. In consequence
      of his extraordinary ability, Frans Hals has been called 'the
      personification of painting'" (Havard: _The Dutch School_,
      p. 110). "We prize in Rembrandt," says another critic, "the
      golden glow of effect based upon artificial contrast of low
      light in immeasurable gloom. Hals was fond of daylight of
      silvery sheen. Both men were painters of touch, but of touch
      on different keys. Rembrandt was the bass, Hals the treble."
      Rembrandt's portraits are the more profound, and there is in
      them an intensity of pathetic realism which was beyond the
      reach of Hals; but Hals seizes the brighter moments of lusty
      life with a force and truth which have never been excelled.
      Hals is best seen in the Haarlem Museum in a series of portrait
      groups. Of his single portraits, No. 1251 in our Gallery is a
      characteristic example, and at Hertford House is a famous and
      charming picture, "The Laughing Cavalier," which is full of
      what Fromentin well calls "the irresistible verve" of Frans
      Hals.

      The life of Hals was irregular and improvident, but full also
      of work and energy. At a time when the Dutch nation fought
      for independence and won it, Hals appears in the ranks of
      its military guilds. He was also a member of the Chamber
      of Rhetoric, and president of the Painters' Corporation at
      Haarlem. In 1610 he married, and five years later was summoned
      before the magistrates for ill-treating his wife, and on that
      occasion was severely reprimanded for his violent and drunken
      habits. His first wife died prematurely, and he saved the
      character of his second by marrying her in 1617. With her
      he seems to have lived happily for nearly fifty years, and
      they brought up a large family. Financial troubles, however,
      befell the painter. In 1654 a forced sale of his pictures and
      furniture at the suit of his baker brought him to penury. A few
      years later we hear of the municipality paying his rent and
      firing for him, and granting him a small annuity. His widow
      had to seek outdoor relief from the guardians of the poor. His
      four sons were all painters, and attained some distinction.
      Several of the best Dutch painters--Van der Helst, A. van
      Ostade, Metsu, Terburg, Steen, and others--were directly or
      indirectly his scholars. In the Haarlem Museum there is a
      picture by Job Berck-Heyde, dated 1652, of the studio in which
      Frans Hals is surrounded by his sons and pupils.


1022. AN ITALIAN NOBLEMAN.

  _Moroni_ (Bergamese: 1525-1578). _See 697._

His left foot appears to have been wounded, for it is attached by
a kind of stirrup and black cord to a band above the knee. It is
interesting to compare this portrait with the closely corresponding one
by Moretto which hangs near it (1025). Both are excellent examples of
the several masters. Both were, no doubt, good likenesses; but there is
a suggestion of poetry in Moretto's which one misses in Moroni's. Both
are believed to be portraits of members of the Fernaroli family.


1023. AN ITALIAN LADY.

  _Moroni_ (Bergamese: 1525-1578). _See 697._

Said to be the wife of the subject of the preceding portrait. Not so
happy a production; Moroni's strength lay in portraits of the other sex.


1024. AN ITALIAN ECCLESIASTIC.

  _Moroni_ (Bergamese: 1525-1578). _See 697._

The letter in his hand is addressed to himself, and tells us that he
is Ludovico di Terzi, Canon of Bergamo, and an Apostolic Prothonotary.
These latter functionaries, of whom there are still twelve in the Roman
Church, are the chiefs of what may be called the Record Office of the
Church. It is their business to draw up the reports of all important
Church functions, such as the enthronements of new popes and public
consistories. It is an office of much dignity--as this holder of it
seems to be fully conscious, and the prothonotaries rank with bishops
in the Church.


1025. AN ITALIAN NOBLEMAN.

  _Il Moretto_ (Brescian: 1498-1555). _See 299._

This picture, dated 1526, is one of Moretto's most elegant portraits.
It is a true character portrait, a picture of a soul as well as of
a face. It shows us an Italian nobleman with all the poetry and
aspiration of chivalry. On his scarlet cap he bears his proud device--a
medallion in gold and enamel of St. Christopher bearing the infant
Saviour--the ideal of Christian chivalry: "Inasmuch as ye have done it
unto the least of one of these, ye have done it unto me." The picture
is no doubt a portrait of one of the Fernaroli family, from whose
palace in Brescia it came.


1031. MARY MAGDALENE.

  _Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo_ (Brescian: about 1480-1548).

      Savoldo, "an excellent amateur, who was apparently first a
      pupil of Romanino, then of Giovanni Bellini, and later of
      Titian"[200] (Morelli: _Borghese Gallery_, p. 246). "He visited
      Florence in 1508, and we find him enrolled as master in the
      Painters' Guild there; his stay cannot, however, have been of
      long duration, as none of his works known to us betray the
      slightest Florentine influence" (_id. German Galleries_, p.
      408). "His works," says Sir F. Burton, "display a distinct
      individuality, the result of tendencies inherent in his nature.
      The romantic element, already developed in Venetian art, shows
      itself strongly in his passion for scenes of early dawn and
      late sunset and effects of night illuminated by fire. His human
      types are pleasing with a certain grave dignity. His colouring
      is on the whole colder than that of his contemporaries of the
      Veneto-Brescian School, and his flesh tints are adust and
      sombre, especially in his male figures; nor are his draperies
      generally brilliant in colour, although he delighted in the
      sheen of silken stuffs, contrasting it with the kind of
      twilight which pervades many of his pictures." "His landscapes
      in sacred subjects make a profound impression of silent wonder
      and devotion. They seem to palpitate in sympathy with the
      deeds they witness, instead of being mere scenic backgrounds.
      In the Berlin Deposition, for instance, the sky is lurid
      and blood-stained; in the Adoration at Turin the shepherds
      seem to be stealing noiselessly along, afraid of causing the
      least disturbance in the hush and awe of the morning" (Mary
      Logan's _Guide to Hampton Court_, in which collection there
      is a picture by Savoldo of a Madonna and Child, dated 1527).
      Savoldo's pictures are rare, and often pass under other names.
      He was, says Vasari (iv. 535), "a fanciful and ingenious
      person, what he has accomplished well meriting to be highly
      commended." An important altar-piece, bearing his signature,
      is in the Brera at Milan, and a beautiful "Adoration of the
      Shepherds" is in the Church of St. Giobbe at Venice.

"A vein of realism, combined with the mystery of Savoldo's deep colours
and half-lights, is seen in the picture of a woman shrouded in a mantle
in the National Gallery" (_Layard_, ii. 585). The picture agrees with
the description given by Ridolfi of a "Magdalene," "a celebrated
work of which there are many copies." A very similar picture, signed
with Savoldo's name, is in the Berlin Gallery. The Magdalen is here
approaching the sepulchre, before which is a vase of ointment on a
square stone--for she had "bought sweet spices, that they might come
and anoint him. And very early in the morning ... they came unto the
sepulchre at the rising of the sun" (Mark xvi. 1, 2). Notice the daring
anachronism in the Venetian background, which "gives with exquisite
truth a very early dawn upon the Giudecca."


1032. CHRIST'S AGONY IN THE GARDEN.

  _Lo Spagna_ (Umbrian: painted 1503-1530).

      Giovanni di Pietro, called Lo Spagna (the Spaniard), presumably
      from his nationality, was a pupil of Pietro Perugino--the
      best, perhaps, of all his pupils who remained untouched by
      other influences. Observe for the influence of Perugino's
      teaching the lovely flowers in the foreground and the attitude
      of the leader of the Roman soldiers on the left (like that
      of Perugino's Michael in 288). In 1516 Lo Spagna was made a
      citizen of Spoleto, and in the following year president of the
      Society of Artists there. The Madonna Enthroned, now in the
      Lower Church of Assisi, is considered his masterpiece.

An angel bearing a chalice flies towards Christ from above ("O my
Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy
will be done"). On the right is Judas with a band of Roman soldiers.
On the foreground are the three disciples sleeping ("What! could ye
not watch with me one hour? Watch, and pray, that ye enter not into
temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak").

This picture was at one time ascribed to the young Raphael,[201] being
identified with the work which he executed for Duke Guidobaldo of
Urbino, and which is thus described by Vasari (iii. 8): "For the same
noble, the master executed another small picture, representing Christ
praying in the Garden, with three of the apostles, who are sleeping
at some distance, and which is so beautifully painted that it could
scarcely be either better or otherwise were it even in miniature."
Vasari traces the history of the picture down to his time, when it
was in the Hermitage of Camaldoli. Our picture was formerly in the
possession of Prince Gabrielli at Rome. The greater portion of the
original drawing for it is in the Uffizi, catalogued under Perugino.


1033. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

  _Filippino Lippi_ (Florentine: 1457-1504). _See 293._
  _See also_ (p. xx)

This picture[202] (like 592, _q.v._) is often ascribed to Botticelli,
from whom Filippino learnt his fondness for the circular form. Every
one will recognise too the resemblance to Botticelli in the daintiness
of the dresses, the trappings of the horses (especially in the middle
of the foreground), and the other accessories (such as the head-dresses
of the Magi on the right). Vasari, indeed, says of Filippino that "the
ornaments he added were so new, so fanciful, and so richly varied, that
he must be considered the first who taught the moderns the new method
of giving variety to the habiliments, and who first embellished his
figures by adorning them with vestments after the antique." Filippino
and later painters give these embellishments to angels as well as
to men; and Vasari, it will be seen, considered it altogether an
improvement. Some remarks on the other side will be found in _Modern
Painters_, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. v. § 14 ("Of the Superhuman
Ideal"). "The ornaments used by Angelico, Giotto, and Perugino (see,
_e.g._ 288) are always of a _generic_ and _abstract_ character. They
are not diamonds, nor brocades, nor velvets, nor gold embroideries;
they are mere spots of gold or of colour, simple patterns upon
_textureless_ draperies; the angel wings burn with transparent crimson
and purple and amber, but they are not set forth with peacocks' plumes;
the golden circlets gleam with changeful light, but they are not beaded
with pearls nor set with sapphires. In the works of Filippino Lippi,
Mantegna, and many other painters following, interesting examples may
be found of the opposite treatment; and as in Lippi the heads are
usually very sweet, and the composition severe, the degrading effect of
the realised decorations and imitated dress may be seen in him simply,
and without any addition of painfulness from other deficiencies of
feeling." In addition to the minor ornamentation, one may notice in
this picture the crowded groups of spectators which Filippino was fond
of introducing. But so harmoniously are they grouped in six principal
groups that the spectator will at first probably be surprised to hear
that there are as many as seventy figures in the picture.


1034. THE NATIVITY OF CHRIST.

  _Sandro Botticelli_ (Florentine: 1447-1510).

      The family surname of Sandro (Alessandro, or Alexander) was
      Filipepi. "He was apprenticed when a lad to a goldsmith, called
      Botticello (for he obstinately refused to learn either to
      read, write, or sum); of which master we know only that he so
      formed this boy that thenceforward the boy thought it right to
      be called Botticello's Sandro, and nobody else's (in Italian
      Sandro di Botticello, abbreviated into Sandro Botticelli).[203]
      Having learned prosperously how to manage gold, he took a
      fancy to know how to manage colour, and was put under the
      best master in Florence, the Monk Lippi" (see 666). Some
      characteristics of Lippi's art--its union of a buoyant spirit
      of life and enjoyment with simplicity and tenderness of
      religious feeling--are seen in the pupil. But he added in his
      turn marked characteristics of his own, which are noticed in
      detail under his several pictures here. "Where Fra Filippo was
      all repose, Sandro was all movement." Moreover, Botticelli's
      range of subject was very wide--embracing Venus crowned with
      roses and the Virgin crowned by Christ, the birth of Love (at
      Florence), and the birth of the Saviour. Botticelli, says
      Ruskin, is "the only painter of Italy who understood the
      thoughts of Heathens and Christians equally, and could in a
      measure paint both Aphrodite and the Madonna. So that he is, on
      the whole, the most universal of painters; and, take him all in
      all, the greatest Florentine workman" (_Fors Clavigera_, 1872,
      xxii. 2). He was, we are told, _persona sofistica_, and lived
      on terms of intimacy with members of the Florentine Platonic
      Academy. The speculations which he shared with the poet Matteo
      Palmieri are enshrined in his "Assumption" (No. 1126), painted
      about 1475. In 1481 he executed a series of designs for
      Landino's edition of Dante: these wonderful drawings, formerly
      in the Hamilton Collection, are now at Berlin. "By this time,"
      says Ruskin, "he was accounted so good a divine, as well as
      painter, that Pope Sixtus IV. sent for him to be master of
      the works in his new (Sistine) chapel--where the first thing
      my young gentleman does, mind you, is to paint the devil,
      in a monk's dress, tempting Christ! The sauciest thing, out
      and out, done in the history of the Reformation, it seems to
      me; yet so wisely done, and with such true respect otherwise
      shown for what was sacred in the Church, that the Pope didn't
      mind; and all went on as merrily as marriage bells." The
      history of Moses--the subject of his other fresco in the
      Sistine Chapel--"teems with his exuberant power and displays
      great grandeur of landscape." In the same chapel are also 28
      portraits of Popes by Botticelli. "And having thus obtained
      great honour and reputation, and considerable sums of money,
      he squandered all the last away. And at this time, Savonarola
      beginning to make himself heard, and founding in Florence the
      company of the Piagnoni (Mourners or Grumblers, as opposed to
      the men of pleasure), Sandro made a Grumbler of himself, being
      then some forty years old; fell sadder, wiser, and poorer day
      by day; until he became a poor bedesman of Lorenzo de' Medici;
      and having gone some time on crutches, being unable to stand
      upright, died peacefully" (_Ariadne Florentina_, Lecture VI.;
      _Fors Clavigera_, 1872, xxii. 2-6).

      Few things are more curious in the history of taste than the
      vicissitudes of Botticelli's fame. In his own day he had been
      much esteemed, but his reputation was soon eclipsed. In 1602
      a decree was issued by the Grand Duke of Tuscany prohibiting
      the inhabitants of Florence from removing important works
      of art, for "neither the city nor the land itself is to be
      despoiled of the masterpieces of eminent painters." The
      schedule of _eccellenti pittori_ contains nineteen names,
      among which that of Filippino Lippi, Botticelli's pupil, is
      included, but not Botticelli himself.[204] The rediscovery
      of Botticelli has fallen to our country and generation. The
      influence of Rossetti, the example of Burne-Jones, the famous
      essay of Pater, and the enthusiasm of Ruskin, have established
      a cult of Botticelli which in earlier generations would have
      passed for a mild lunacy.[205] Goldsmith, had he witnessed
      it, might have substituted the name of Botticelli for that of
      Perugino in his satire on fashionable æstheticism. The poetical
      imagination of Botticelli, his inventive design, the strong
      sense of life which glows through all his pictures, are truly
      admirable. But what lends additional force to his vogue is
      the seal of _intimité_ which is set upon his work. Botticelli
      treats his themes, says Burton "with a verve, a naïveté, and
      pathos peculiar to himself." Besides the very greatest men,
      there is (says Pater) "a certain number of artists who have
      a distinct faculty of their own by which they convey to us a
      peculiar quality of pleasure which we cannot get elsewhere, and
      these, too, have their place in general culture. Of this select
      number Botticelli is one; he has the freshness, the uncertain
      and diffident promise which belongs to the earlier Renaissance
      itself, and makes it perhaps the most interesting period in
      the history of the mind; in studying his work one begins to
      understand to how great a place in human culture the art of
      Italy had been called."

The other pictures by Botticelli in the National Gallery (see 275,
1126, and 915) adequately represent his earlier phases; this one
completes the story of his life--painted as it was under Savonarola's
influence--

    Wrought in the troublous times of Italy
      By Sandro Botticelli, when for fear

      Of that last judgment, and last day drawn near
    To end all labour and all revelry,
    He worked and prayed in silence.

  ANDREW LANG: _Ballads and Lyrics, etc._

This beautiful and curious picture is very characteristic of
Botticelli's genius. It is full of highly wrought emotion--note "the
fervour of the still Madonna as she kneels before the Child, the
extraordinary nervous tension which the artist has managed to suggest
in the seated figure of Joseph, the rapture and ecstasy of the angels";
the picture is full also, as we shall see, of mystic symbolism, but
all is crowned and harmonised by a sense of pictorial daintiness and
beauty. The centre of the picture is occupied by the familiar subject
of the Nativity, and the accessories suggest in symbolic fashion the
effects of Christ's Advent upon the good and the evil respectively. The
theological symbolism may be seen in the gesture of the divine Child
pointing to his mouth--typifying that he was the Word of God. So at the
bottom of the picture there are devils running, at Christ's coming,
into chinks of the rocks (those who are Christ's must put away "the
works of darkness"); whilst the shepherds and angels embracing signify
the reconciliation such as Savonarola wished to effect between heaven
and earth. On either side of the central group angels are telling
the glad tidings "of peace on earth, goodwill towards men." Note the
symmetry in this part of the picture; the three Magi on the left, the
three shepherds in adoration on the right; and in colour, the red frock
of the angel on the right, the red wings on the left. Meanwhile in the
sky above is a lovely choir of Botticelli's floating angels, dancing
between earth and heaven, on a golden background suffused with light.
The picture is, says Ruskin, "a quite perfect example of what the
masters of the pure Greek school did in Florence.... The entire purpose
of the picture is a mystic symbolism by motion and chiaroscuro. By
motion, first. There is a dome of burning clouds in the upper heaven.
Twelve angels half float, half dance, in a circle, round the lower
vault of it. All their drapery is drifted so as to make you feel the
whirlwind of their motion. They are seen by gleams of silvery or fiery
light, relieved against an equally lighted blue of inimitable depth
and loveliness. It is impossible for you ever to see a more noble
work of passionate Greek chiaroscuro--rejoicing in light" (_Lectures
on Landscape_, § 58). The introduction in the same picture of the
solemn teaching below, with these beautiful angel forms above, suggests
precisely what Ruskin has defined to be Botticelli's position among
pictorial reformers. "He was what Luther wished to be, but could not
be--a reformer still believing in the Church; his mind is at peace,
and his art therefore can pursue the delight of beauty and yet remain
prophetic." "He was not a preacher of new doctrines, but a witness
against the betrayal of old ones."

The first and more obvious intention of Botticelli's painted sermon
was, as we have seen, to show the effects of the Advent upon the good
and the evil. But he has also a particular application, an esoteric
meaning. The clue to this is afforded by the Greek inscription at the
top, which, being interpreted, is--

      "This picture I, Alexander, painted at the end of the year
      1500, in the troubles of Italy, in the half-time after the
      time during the fulfilment of the eleventh of St. John, in the
      Second Woe of the Apocalypse, in the loosing of the devil for
      three years and a half. Afterwards he shall be confined, and we
      shall see him trodden down, as in this picture."

"In the troubles of Italy, at the end of the year 1500." Now, on
May 12, 1497, exactly three years and a half before the date of
Botticelli's inscription, Savonarola was burnt alive (as depicted
on the little panel, No. 1301); and his death, says the historian,
"meant for Florence the triumph of all that was most corrupt; vice
was everywhere rampant, and virtuous living was utterly despised."
But in the faith of Botticelli, the reverent disciple of Savonarola,
this tyranny of the Evil One was doomed to pass away. He saw "in
the troubles of Italy" a fulfilment of the awful words to which his
inscription refers us in the eleventh chapter of the Revelation of St.
John the Divine:--

      The holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.
      And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall
      prophesy. These are the two olive trees. And when they shall
      have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out
      of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall
      overcome them, and kill them. And they that dwell upon the
      earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send
      gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented
      them that dwelt on the earth. And after three days and an half
      the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood
      upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.
      And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them,
      Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and
      their enemies beheld them. The second woe is past. And there
      were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world
      are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he
      shall reign for ever and ever.

To the elect, then, Botticelli meant his picture to show the fulfilment
of the prophecy by the Second Advent of Christ, and the final triumph
of Savonarola. The men embraced by angels are in this reading of the
picture the "witnesses" to whom the spirit of life was returned; they
are welcomed back to earth by angels, ere they are rapt heavenward.
They bear olive boughs, because in the Apocalypse olive trees are
symbolical of the Lord's anointed ones. "There is but one point
which seems at variance with the Biblical text: in it two witnesses
are spoken of, here there are three. This deviation was doubtless
intentional. When Savonarola died, two others shared his palm of
martyrdom, Fra Domenico Buonvicini and Fra Silvestre Marussi. The three
figures crowned with myrtle represent the three risen and glorified
martyrs" (Richter's _Lectures on the National Gallery_, p. 61. See also
Mr. Sidney Colvin's article in the _Portfolio_, Feb. 1879).


1035. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.

  _Francia Bigio_ (Florentine: 1482-1525).

      Francesco di Cristoforo Bigi (this picture is signed FRA CP
      = _Franciscus Cristophori pinxit_), commonly called Francia
      Bigio, was the son of a weaver at Milan, and "devoted himself
      to the art of painting, not so much (Vasari tells us) because
      he was desirous of fame, as that he might thus be enabled to
      render assistance to his indigent relations." He was at first
      the pupil of Albertinelli (645), and afterwards formed a close
      friendship with Andrea del Sarto, in conjunction with whom
      he produced his first important work in 1513, in the small
      cloister of the Servi. It was here that occurred the famous
      scene, described by Vasari, with the Friars, who, having
      uncovered Bigio's fresco of the _Sposalizio_ before the painter
      considered it finished, so enraged him that he defaced some of
      the finest heads in it with a mason's hammer, and would have
      destroyed the whole but for forcible intervention. Neither he
      nor any other painter could be induced to repair the injuries,
      which remain to this day. Bigio was, as we may see from this
      picture, an admirable portrait-painter--an excellence which
      he owed, says Vasari, to his patient and modest industry. He
      was "a great lover of peace, and for that reason (adds Vasari
      drily) would never marry."

The young man wears on his breast the cross of the Knights of Malta.
The letter in his hand bears the date 1514. On the parapet is an
inscription: tar: vblia: chi: bien: eima (slowly forgets he who loves
well)--

        Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
    And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
    On lips that are for others; deep as love,
    Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
    O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

  TENNYSON: _The Princess_.


1036. A MAN'S PORTRAIT.

  _Unknown_ (Flemish: 15th-16th century).

A picture, it might be, of Hamlet with the skulls: "That skull had a
tongue in it, and could sing once." In his left hand he holds a flower:
"there's pansies, that's for thoughts."


1041. THE VISION OF ST. HELENA.

  _Paolo Veronese_ (Veronese: 1528-1588). _See 26._

      St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, made a pilgrimage to
      Jerusalem, when a victory was gained by the emperor, to recover
      the very cross of which she had seen a mysterious symbol.
      Having reached the sacred city, she caused the soil of Calvary
      to be excavated, because the Jews were accustomed to bury the
      instruments of execution upon the spot where they had been
      used. And there she found three crosses, and that one which was
      the holy cross was distinguished from the others by the healing
      of a lady of quality who was sick. The empress divided the
      true cross into three parts, giving one of them to the Bishop
      of Jerusalem, and another to the church at Constantinople. The
      third she brought to Rome, where she built for it the great
      basilica of S. Croce.

Here we see the saint in devout reverie, while through the open window
two cherubim bear a cross through the air. This beautiful picture, in
which Veronese gives us an ideal and mystic composition, treated with a
simplicity unusual to him, seems to have been derived from a plate by
Marc Antonio, the founder of Italian engraving (1480-1534), supposed
to be after a drawing by Raphael. The design is identical, though an
exquisitely airy angel with a slender cross in Marc Antonio's engraving
is replaced in Veronese's picture by chubby cherubs with a more solid
cross. (The engraving is reproduced in the _Art Journal_, 1891, p.
376, with some critical remarks. "This wonderful picture," says the
writer, "is at once a delight and a puzzle. If Veronese was capable of
efforts like the 'Vision of St. Helena,' why have we not more such,
seeing how many treasures of his art have survived to us? The engraving
offers an explanation, curiously exact, of this difficulty. Whatever
in the 'Vision' is Veronese's own--the drapery and the colour--is not
more remarkable than in many other pictures of his; on the other hand,
whatever is not distinctively of Veronese is Marc Antonio's.... What
more natural than that Veronese should essay to clothe in the glory of
his own colouring[206] some creation of the great Italian who learnt
from Dürer how to interpret the art of Raphael to Italy?") Veronese's
picture once formed the altar-piece of a chapel dedicated to St. Helena
at Venice, and was afterwards in the collection of the great Duke of
Marlborough.


1042. A MAN'S PORTRAIT.

  _Catharina van Hemessen_ (Flemish: painted about 1550).

      Catharina was the daughter of a painter named Jan Sanders,
      called Jan van Hemessen from his native village. She married
      a musician of repute in the Low Countries, and with him went
      to Madrid, where she acquired celebrity and favour through her
      ability in portraiture.


1045. A CANON AND HIS PATRON SAINT.

  _Gerard David_ (Early Flemish: 1460-1523).

      This remarkable painter, who has been rediscovered in recent
      years by the researches of Mr. Weale, was born in Oudewater,
      a small town in the south of Holland. He settled in Bruges in
      1483, passing through the various grades of the Painters' Guild
      in that town, until he became its Dean in 1501. He was also
      connected with the Guild of Illuminators of Bruges, and with
      that of painters at Antwerp. In 1496 he married the daughter
      of a Bruges goldsmith. In 1509 he painted and presented to
      the Carmelites of Sion at Bruges a beautiful altar-piece, in
      which he introduced his own portrait in the background to the
      right, and that of his wife to the left. This altar-piece was
      sold by the Carmelites in 1785, and is now in the Museum of
      Rouen. Other important works by the painter are now in the
      Academy at Bruges, and in the church of St. Basil in that
      town there is a triptych by him. The present picture and No.
      1432 were also painted for a church in the same place. David's
      works have often been confounded with those of Memlinc, and
      it is impossible to give them higher praise. He was a fine
      colourist. His faces show that he was an adequate interpreter
      of character. The details he executed with the utmost
      minuteness and skill; and he is remarkable also for his careful
      and truthful landscapes. In 1508 David entered a religious
      brotherhood; he was buried in Notre Dame at Bruges, where he
      was laid beneath the tower.

The canon kneels in adoration, with his patron saints around him--St.
Bernardino of Siena behind, St. Donatian in advance of him, and St.
Martin to the left. It was St. Martin who shared his cloak with the
beggar, and here in the distance to the left--in compliment to the
canon's generosity--is a beggar limping towards the group, asking
alms. Notice the wood through which he walks. The subdued light
beneath the thick foliage of the trees is admirably rendered. David
"was the first painter to think of the shadow-giving nature of trees.
Trees had for many years formed a favourite subject for backgrounds,
but even by Memlinc they were rather conventionally rendered, one by
one, not grouped into woods, and seldom brought into the foreground.
Here we have a wood brought near us, with its domed canopy of foliage
above, and its labyrinth of trunks buried in sylvan twilight below"
(Conway's _Early Flemish Artists_, p. 298). Notice also the beautiful
and elaborate work on the robes of St. Martin and St. Donatian. They
are fully described in Mr. Weale's monograph referred to below. This
will repay the most minute examination. The crimson-velvet cope of St.
Martin is a masterpiece. The portrait of the donor is admirable.

The history of this beautiful picture, and of the changes and chances
it went through before finding a permanent home in the National
Gallery, is very curious. In 1501 a colleague of Richard van der
Capelle (see 1432) and one of the executors of his will, namely, Canon
Bernardin Salviati (illegitimate son of a rich Florentine merchant who
traded or resided in Flanders), was secretary of the chapter of S.
Donatian at Bruges. Having obtained leave to restore and embellish the
altar of SS. John Baptist and Mary Magdalene, he commissioned Gerard
David to paint the shutters of the reredos. These shutters, together
with those of several other altar reredoses in the nave of the church,
were, at the request of the sacristan, who complained that they were
always breaking the wax candles, sold in a lot by order of the chapter
in 1787 for an insignificant sum of money. What became of the others is
not known, but the one before us was, as we learn from the letters of
Horace Walpole, bought in 1792, by Mr. Thomas Barrett, of Lee Priory,
Kent, and it figures in the catalogue of that collection as "a group
of saints by John Gossart of Maubeuge." At the sale of the Lee Priory
Collection in May 1859, it was knocked down to the late Mr. William
Benoni White for 525 guineas. Sir J. C. Robinson drew Mr. Weale's
attention to the picture, which he at once recognised as being the
right-hand shutter of the reredos of Salviati's chantry altar. "I tried
hard," says Mr. Weale, "but in vain, to persuade the late Sir Charles
Eastlake to purchase it for the National Gallery, but Mr. White would
not part with it for less than £1000. Oddly enough the latter, who bore
the character of being a most penurious and miserly man, by his last
will and testament proved a generous benefactor to the nation, and left
this panel in July 1878 to the National Gallery" (W. H. James Weale:
_Portfolio_ monograph on Gerard David, 1895, p. 18).


1047. A FAMILY GROUP.

  _Lorenzo Lotto_ (Venetian: 1480-1555). _See 699._

"Supposed," says the official catalogue, "to represent the painter,
his wife, and two children." This cannot be the case, for Lotto seems
to have had no close domestic ties. The picture is, however, full of
interest for its own sake. "The man and the woman are, it is true,
both looking out of the picture, but nevertheless the feeling we have
is that the group before us is not, as is usual in Italian family
pictures, a mere collection of portraits, but that it is composed of
people who are intimately related to each other, constantly acting
and reacting one upon the other, and that it is presented in a way
which, while giving the individuality of each, makes it hard to
think of them except as conditioned, and even determined, by each
other's presence." We may in fact find in this domestic group an
anticipation of the spirit of the modern psychological novel. "Far
from being painted as such groups usually were in Italy--a mere
collection of faces looking one like the other, but with no bond of
sympathy or interest uniting them--it is in itself a family story, as
modern almost as Tolstoi's _Katia_. Lotto makes it evident that the
sensitiveness of the man's nature has brought him to understand and
condone his wife's limitations, and that she, in her turn, has been
refined and softened into sympathy with him; so that the impression
the picture leaves is one of great kindliness, covering a multitude of
small disappointments and incompatibilities" (B. Berenson: _Lorenzo
Lotto_, pp. 194, 227, 322). Mr. Berenson calls attention further to
the historical significance of this page from contemporary life and
manners. The artist "opens our eyes to the existence in a time and in
a country supposed to be wholly devoted to carnality and carnage, of
gentle, sensitive people, who must have had many of our own social
and ethical ideas." He "helps us to a truer and saner view of the
sixteenth century in Italy than has been given by popular writers from
Stendhal downwards, who too exclusively have devoted themselves to its
lurid side. Lotto's charity helps us to restore that human balance
without which the Italy of the sixteenth century would be a veritable
pandemonium." The Venetian costumes, etc. may also be noticed. The
little girl is dressed in as "grown-up" a way as her mother. On the
table is a Turkey carpet, reminding us of Venetian commerce with the
East. A Turkey carpet figures also in No. 1105.


1048. PORTRAIT OF A CARDINAL.

  _Italian School_ (16th century).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

Painted on copper, a material which seems first to have been used for
painting in the School of Antwerp. M. Auguste Cartan, of Besançon, in
a paper by him in the _Courrier de l'Art_ (June 25, 1886), points out
the resemblance between this portrait and one, also on copper, in the
museum at Besançon, ascribed to Scipione Pulzone, surnamed Gaetano
(1550-1558), a painter who has been called "the Van Dyck of the Roman
School." A contemporary biographer speaks of Gaetano's portraits as
being so conscientious that every hair is painted, and of his skill in
rendering various stuffs; both these characteristics may be observed
in the present picture. In the same paper M. Cartan identifies the
Cardinal as Cardinal Sirleto, Librarian of the Vatican 1570-1585, and
tutor of S. Carlo Borromeo. There is a bust of Cardinal Sirleto in the
church of San Lorenzo at Rome, and M. Cartan declares the resemblance
between the bust and this portrait to be unmistakable. There is also
in the Corsini Palace at Rome a bust portrait of the same personage by
Scipione Gaetano.


1049. THE CRUCIFIXION.

  _Unknown_ (German-Westphalian: 15th century).

A good example of the strength and weakness of this German art. What is
good are the clothes, which are very quaint and various. The figures
show a ghastly enjoyment of horror and ugliness: notice especially the
crucified thief on the left.


1050. A SEA VIEW.

  _Bakhuizen_ (Dutch: 1631-1708). _See 204._


1051. OUR LORD, ST. THOMAS, AND ST. ANTHONY.

  _Bertucci_ (Umbrian: 16th century). _See 282._

Our Lord extends his hand and foot to the doubting St. Thomas: "Reach
hither thy finger, and behold my hands; ... and be not faithless,
but believing." To the right, resting his hands on the shoulder of
the donor of the picture, is St. Anthony of Padua, another saint who
doubted "till"--as the legend (painted by Murillo) describes--"in his
arms," so it is told, "The saint did his dear Lord enfold, And there
appeared a light like gold From out the skies of Padua." This picture
appears to be by the same painter as No. 282, and both are now ascribed
to Bertucci.


1052. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.

  _Lombard School_ (15th or early 16th century).


1053. A CHURCH AT DELFT.

  _Emanuel de Witte_ (Dutch: 1607-1692). _Room X._

      Witte was a native of Alkmaar, but settled at Delft, where he
      probably met another architectural painter, Dirk van Delen.
      "An exact knowledge of perspective, a perfect conception of
      light and shade, and a delicacy of execution which reveals
      every detail without degenerating into dryness, figures well
      drawn and sufficiently picturesque ... are the qualities which
      distinguish his works" (Havard: _The Dutch School_, p. 245).
      The picture before us is not a very favourable specimen of
      the painter's skill. In the gallery at Hertford House one of
      his masterpieces may be seen. His style, says Mr. Phillips in
      his catalogue of that collection, "is absolutely opposed to
      that of the somewhat earlier painters of the Flemish School,
      Steenwyck the Younger and Pieter Neeffs the Elder, who obtained
      their chief effects by accuracy of linear perspective, while
      De Witte realised his by broad and masterly chiaroscuro. In
      his treatment of light and colour he shows some affinity to
      Pieter de Hooch." The date of his birth is uncertain; it should
      perhaps be 1617.

Notice the anti-Pauline practice of the worshippers ("Every man
praying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. But every
woman that prayeth with her head uncovered, dishonoureth her head"--1
Corinthians xi. 4, 5). Here it is the women who are "uncovered," the
men who are "covered."


1054. A VIEW IN VENICE.

  _Francesco Guardi_ (Venetian: 1712-1793). _See 210._


1055. A VILLAGE CARD PARTY.

  _Hendrick Sorgh_ (Dutch: 1611-1670).

      Hendrick Rokes, a painter of Rotterdam, was the son of Martin
      Rokes, the master of the passage-boat from Rotterdam to
      Dordrecht. On account of his care and attention to passengers,
      Martin acquired the appellation of Sorgh, or Careful; the name
      descended to and was adopted by the son. Having shown an early
      talent for art, Hendrick was sent to Antwerp, where he was
      placed under the tuition of the younger Teniers. His style,
      however, rather recalls that of Adrian Brouwer. He painted
      Biblical subjects in a familiar manner, indoor scenes of humble
      life, village fairs, and, later, river and sea views. Some of
      his best works are in the Dresden Gallery.

The game rests with the woman, who is not going to play, it would seem,
till the score is settled.


1056. "A KISS IN THE CUP."

  _Hendrick Sorgh_ (Dutch: 1611-1670).

    Drink to me only with thine eyes,
      And I will pledge with mine;
    Or leave a kiss but in the cup
      And I'll not look for wine.

  BEN JONSON: _To Celia_.


1057. A RIVER SCENE.

  _Claude Joseph Vernet_ (French: 1714-1789). _See 236._


1058. VENICE: THE CANAL REGGIO.

  _Canaletto_ (Venetian: 1697-1768). _See 127._

One of the principal waterways, after the Grand Canal, in Venice. The
picture is a good instance of this painter's method of representing
water. He "covers the whole space of it with one monotonous ripple,
composed of a coat of well-chosen, but perfectly opaque and smooth
sea-green, covered with a certain number--I cannot state the exact
average, but it varies from three hundred and fifty to four hundred
and upwards, according to the extent of canvas to be covered, of white
concave touches, which are very properly symbolical of ripple[207]....
If it be but remembered that every one of the surfaces of those
multitudinous ripples is in nature a mirror which catches, according
to its position, either the image of the sky, or of the silver beaks
of the gondolas, or of their black bodies and scarlet draperies, or of
the white marble, or the green sea-weed on the low stones, it cannot
but be felt that those waves would have something more of colour upon
them than that opaque dead green.... Venice is sad and silent now to
what she was in his time; but even yet, could I but place the reader
at early morning on the quay below the Rialto, when the market-boats,
full-laden, float into groups of golden colour, and let him watch the
dashing of the water about their glittering steely heads, and under
the shadows of the vine leaves; and show him the purple of the grapes
and the figs, and the glowing of the scarlet gourds, carried away in
long streams upon the waves; and among them, the crimson fish-baskets,
plashing and sparkling and flaming as the morning sun falls on their
wet tawny sides; and above, the painted sails of the fishing-boats,
orange and white, scarlet and blue,--he would not be merciful to
Canaletto any more" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. v. ch. i.
§§ 18, 19).


1059. VENICE: SAN PIETRO IN CASTELLO.

  _Canaletto_ (Venetian: 1697-1768). _See 127._

A humble church, typical of the humble origin of Venice, a city founded
on the sands by fugitives. The church stands on one of the outermost
islets, where, in the seventh century, it is said that St. Peter
appeared in person to the Bishop of Heraclea, and commanded him to
found, in his honour, a church in that spot. "The title of Bishop of
Castello was first taken in 1091; St. Mark's was not made the cathedral
church till 1807.... The present church is among the least interesting
in Venice; a wooden bridge, something like that of Battersea on a
small scale, connects its island, now almost deserted, with a wretched
suburb of the city behind the arsenal; and a blank level of lifeless
grass, rotted away in places rather than trodden, is extended before
its mildewed façade and solitary tower" (_Stones of Venice_, vol. i.
Appendix iv.)


1060. TWO VEDETTES ON THE WATCH.

  _Wouwerman_ (Dutch: 1619-1668). _See 878._


1061. DELFT: SCENE OF AN EXPLOSION

  _Egbert van der Poel_ (Dutch: 1621-1664).

      Born at Delft; in 1650 entered as a member of the painter's
      guild there; afterwards moved to Rotterdam, where he died.
      "Although his name recalls fires especially--never did painter
      burn so many houses and farm cottages as Van der Poel--he
      painted also small scenes in the style of Ostade, as we see
      in his 'Rustic House' in the Louvre, and the 'Interior' in
      the Museum of Amsterdam. There are also a few pictures by him
      representing still life" (Havard: _The Dutch School_, p. 156).

One of the many views painted by this artist of the explosion of a
powder mill at Delft, October 12, 1654. One might think the mill
exploded specially to be painted, so neatly and in order is everything
represented. In this explosion, a well-known painter, Carel Fabrizius,
lost his life.


1062. A BATTLE PIECE

  _Ferrarese School_ (early 16th century).


1063. A MAN'S PORTRAIT.

  _Flemish School_ (15th-16th century).


1074. AN OYSTER SUPPER.

  _Dirk Hals_ (Dutch; 1589-1656).

      "Dirk was the younger brother of Frans Hals (see 1021), and
      was born at Malines in 1589. He followed his elder brother
      to Haarlem, where he died in 1656--that is, ten years before
      Frans. Dirk was a clever artist, at least so far as may be
      judged by his works, which are extremely rare. His figures
      are amusing, graceful in manner, and especially interesting
      from their costumes, which belong to his own time, and now
      appear somewhat strange and extravagant" (Havard: _The Dutch
      School_, p. 121). Dirk confined himself chiefly, says Burton,
      "to the representation of convivial parties, where cavaliers
      and ladies are seen enjoying themselves without much reserve
      at table, in the dance, or with music. His light pencil, his
      brilliant colour, laid on thinly over a greyish ground, and
      sharply accentuated, suited the themes and the small scale of
      his pictures."

The picture is signed (on the architrave above the open door), and
dated 1626.


1075. VIRGIN AND CHILD, ST. JEROME, AND ST. FRANCIS.

  _Perugino_ (Umbrian: 1446-1523). _See 288._

A very "Peruginesque" example--full, that is, of the peculiar sentiment
and apparent affectation which caused Goldsmith to make the admiration
of him the test of absurd connoisseurship.[208] But "what is commonly
thought affected in his design," says Ruskin, "is indeed the true
remains of the great architectural symmetry which was soon to be lost,
and which makes him the true follower of Arnolfo and Brunelleschi,"
the great Florentine builders (_Ariadne Florentina_, § 72). The picture
displays also in perfection "that quality of tone in which Perugino
stands unsurpassed; and the rich and liquid, but subdued colour is
steeped in a transparent atmosphere of pale golden glow" (Burton).

The history of this picture affords a good instance of that enrichment
of the National Gallery with "graceful interludes by Perugino," saved
from "the wreck of Italian monasteries," of which Mr. Ruskin speaks
in his preface to this work. It was painted by Perugino in 1507, to
be placed over an altar in memory of a master-carpenter at Perugia.
It afterwards passed into the possession of the monks who owned the
church. They sold it, with the chapel in which it was placed, to the
Cecconi family, from whom it passed by inheritance to the family Della
Penna. In 1822 the head of this family removed it to his palace,
leaving a copy of it in its place in the church, and in 1879 the
picture itself was bought from the Baron della Penna for the Nation.


1077. ALTAR-PIECE (dated 1501).

  _Borgognone_ (Lombard: about 1455-1523). _See 298._

A picture of the "man of sorrows." On either side of the infant Christ
are shown the scenes of his suffering[209]--

    In stature grows the Heavenly Child,
        With death before his eyes;
    A Lamb unblemished, meek and mild,
        Prepared for sacrifice.

For sacrifice--but also for redemption, and so above the throne are
the angels of God, playing the glad music of death swallowed up in
victory. In the right-hand compartment is Christ bearing his cross; in
the left his agony in the garden. The three disciples are here crouched
asleep lower down, and behind a wall are the Roman soldiers, whilst
from above an angel brings a cup with a cross, two spears, and a crown
of thorns in it: "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me:
nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done. And there appeared an
angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him" (Luke xxii. 42, 43).


1078. THE DEPOSITION FROM THE CROSS.


1079. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

  _Unknown_ (Early Flemish: 15th century).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

      These two pictures closely resemble in style and colouring
      the large altar-piece in the church of St. Bavon at Ghent,
      which is attributed to Gerard van der Meire.[210] That painter
      flourished at Ghent about the middle of the fifteenth century;
      entering the Guild of St. Luke in 1452, and becoming sub-dean
      in 1474. He is described in a chronicle of the time as a pupil
      of Hubert van Eyck, but the historian Van Mander says he began
      to paint after the death of Jan van Eyck, a statement which is
      confirmed by the date of his enrolment in the Guild. Nothing
      is yet really known about him except the bare fact of his
      existence, for no picture has been certainly identified as his.

(1079.) It is interesting to compare this representation of the scene,
almost childlike in its simplicity, alike with the treatment by later
painters (see, for instance, Rembrandt's, No. 47), and with the more
decorative and symbolic treatment of the early Italians (_e.g._
Botticelli, No. 1034). The picture before us "shows no particular
felicity of rendering, no depth or insight; it carries little
conviction of reality, but it has a homely charm. The painter was
thoroughly convinced of the actual truth of what he represented, and
thought only of bringing the same home to everyday experience. In the
background he has placed a village, in which men are discussing what is
going on" (J. E. Hodgson, R.A., in the _Magazine of Art_, 1890, p. 42).


1080. HEAD OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

  _Unknown_ (School of the Lower Rhine: 15th century).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

The introduction of children's faces--in the character of mourning
angels--to so ghastly a subject is very characteristic of the love of
horror common to the Flemish and German Schools.


1081. A MAN AT PRAYER.

  _Unknown_ (Early Flemish: 15th century).

Probably a portrait of the donor of an altar-piece, of which this
picture formed one compartment.


1082. THE VISIT OF THE MADONNA TO ST. ELIZABETH.

  _Joachim Patinir_ (Early Flemish: died 1524). _See 715._


1083. CHRIST CROWNED WITH THORNS.

  _Unknown_ (Early Flemish: 15th century).
  _See also_ (p. xx)


1084. THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT.

  _Joachim Patinir_ (Early Flemish: died 1524). _See 715._


1085. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Unknown_ (School of the Lower Rhine: 15th century).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

A picture of the same school as 706, but the Flemish influence is here
more discernible. In the background is a church lighted from within.
The heads are very ugly (notice the saint in the left compartment), but
the execution, especially of the accessories, is very delicate.


1086. CHRIST APPEARING AFTER HIS RESURRECTION.

  _Unknown_ (Early Flemish: 15th century).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

Notice the empty tomb, visible through the half-opened door in the
background--with the Roman soldier asleep beside, and an angel above
it.


1087. THE MOCKING OF CHRIST.

  _Unknown_ (Early German: 15th century).

Sir Martin Conway says of the Lyversberg Passion what is equally
applicable to this picture, and indeed to most of the German art of
the same period (_cf. e.g._ 1049). "The Passion, as conceived by this
painter, was a scene for the display of brutality rather than the
exhibition of heroism. The enduring Christ is not the subject of the
pictures, but the torturing villains that surround him. The figure
of Christ does not dominate the rest; the vile element seems always
victorious" (_Early Flemish Artists_, p. 202).


1088. THE CRUCIFIXION.

  _Unknown_ (German School: 16th century).

An altar-piece in three compartments. On the side panels are two
figures, probably the donor and his wife, kneeling.


1089. MADONNA AND CHILD WITH ST. ELIZABETH.

  _Unknown_ (Early Flemish: 15th century).


1090. PAN AND SYRINX.

  _François Boucher_ (French: 1704-1770).

      Boucher, "the Anacreon of Painting," was the typical
      painter-decorator of the Louis-quinze period. He painted (as
      Mr. Dobson sings in _Old World Idylls_)--

      Rose-water Raphael,--_en couleur de rose_,
    The crowned Caprice, whose sceptre, nowise sainted,
      Swayed the light realm of ballets and bon-mots;
    Ruled the dim boudoir's _demi-jour_, or drove
    Pink-ribboned flocks through some pink-flowered grove.

    Made of his work a kind of languid Maying,
      Filled with false gods and muses misbegot;--
    A Versailles Eden of cosmetic youth,
    Wherein most things went naked, save the Truth.

      Boucher is represented by no less than 21 canvases at Hertford
      House, some of them of considerable historical interest. For
      Boucher owed much to the favour of Madame de Pompadour, who
      purchased in 1753 the two fine pictures of "Sunrise" and
      "Sunset" now at Hertford House. In the same collection are
      the idyllic and erotic subjects with which Boucher decorated
      the boudoir at the Hôtel de l'Arsenal in which the Pompadour
      was wont to receive her royal lover. He also painted several
      portraits of the all-powerful favourite, whom he instructed in
      the art of etching; one of these portraits is also at Hertford
      House. Boucher was the son of a designer for embroideries. He
      spent some years in Rome, but returned to Paris untouched by
      the great works he had seen. He suited his art to the taste of
      the time, and had his reward in reaping considerable wealth by
      his productions, which, including drawings for the engravers,
      he poured forth in thousands. In 1755 he became inspector
      of the Gobelins, an appointment which he resigned in 1765
      on becoming first painter to the king. Sir Joshua Reynolds
      describes a visit to Boucher, whom he found "at work on a very
      large picture without drawings or models of any kind." Sir
      Joshua allows, however, to some of his earlier works, "grace
      and beauty and good skill in composition." His easy execution
      and often dainty colour are also admired. He was the idol of
      his day, but his meretricious art was the subject of very
      pungent criticism from the not very austere Diderot.[211]

For another version of the same subject, see 659.


1002. ST. SEBASTIAN.

  _Zaganelli_ (Ferrarese: about 1500).

      The only known work by a master who signs himself Bernardino
      (of) Cotignola (in the Duchy of Ferrara). He was a brother of
      Francesco Zaganelli, and is believed to have worked towards the
      end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.

This picture formed the chief panel of an altar-piece formerly in the
church of the Carmine at Pavia, and thus described by Bartoli:

      In the twelfth chapel (is) an ancient picture divided into
      six compartments, of which the three larger exhibit, in the
      centre St. Sebastian, and at the sides St. Nicholas and St.
      Catherine of Alexandria, while the three smaller which are
      above represent the body of the Redeemer supported by two
      angels in the centre, and at the sides the Virgin Mary and the
      Announcing Angel. This (altar-piece) is the work of Bernardino
      da Cotignola, who has affixed to it his name on a feigned label.

For the story of St. Sebastian, see under 669.


1093. OUR LADY OF THE ROCKS.

  _Leonardo da Vinci_ (Florentine: 1452-1519).

      There is no more fascinating and illustrious name in the annals
      of art than Leonardo, of Vinci, a town in the Val d'Arno below
      Florence. He has been well called, from the many-sidedness of
      his efforts, the Faust of the Renaissance. The great public
      which knows him best by his few pictures and many drawings does
      not always remember that he was also musician, critic, poet,
      sculptor, architect, mechanist, mathematician, philosopher,
      and explorer. In a letter addressed to Ludovico il Moro,
      Prince of Milan, in whose service he lived for sixteen years
      (1483-1499), he enumerates as his chief qualification his
      skill in military engineering, and throws in his art as an
      incidental accomplishment. "I will also undertake any work in
      sculpture, in marble, in bronze, or in terra-cotta; likewise
      in painting I can do what may be done as well as any man, be
      he who he may." The range and amount alike of his theoretical
      discoveries and practical ingenuities were extraordinary. He
      divined the circulation of the blood. He anticipated Copernicus
      in propounding the theory of the earth's movement. He declared
      that "motion was the cause of all life." He forestalled
      Lamarck's classification of vertebrate and invertebrate. He
      takes his place, in virtue of his researches into rocks and
      fossils, with the masters of modern science who have proclaimed
      the continuity of geological causes. He was the first inventor
      of screw propulsion. He made paddle-wheels. He attacked the
      problem of aerial navigation. He invented swimming belts. He
      anticipated by many years the invention of the camera obscura.
      He was great alike as a civil and a military engineer. He
      watered the Lombard plain by the invention of sluices; he
      was one of the first to recommend the use of mines for the
      destruction of forts, and he anticipated the inventions of
      our time in suggesting breech-loading guns and mitrailleuses.
      He shrank neither from the highest speculations nor from the
      humblest contrivances. For centuries after his death the
      burghers of Milan minced meat for their sausages with machines
      invented by the painter of "Monna Lisa."

      This marvellous curiosity in science and invention could
      not but profoundly influence Leonardo's work as an artist.
      One result is as obvious as it was unfortunate. He paid the
      penalty of versatility in undertaking more than he could
      fulfil. His dilatoriness is well known. He went once to Rome,
      but the Pope, Leo X., offended him by exclaiming, "Ah! this
      man will never do anything; he thinks of the end before the
      beginning of his work" (He had made elaborate preparations
      for varnishing his picture before he began it.) Many of his
      works were thus unfinished, and others, owing to premature
      experiments in material, are ruined--especially his famous Last
      Supper at Milan, of which there is an original drawing at the
      Royal Academy. "Leonardo's oil painting," says Ruskin,--not,
      however, without a touch of exaggeration--"is all gone black
      or to nothing." "Because Leonardo made models of machines,
      dug canals, built fortifications, and dissipated half his
      art-power in capricious ingenuities, we have many anecdotes
      of him;--but no picture of importance on canvas, and only a
      few withered stains of one upon a wall" (_Queen of the Air_, §
      157). But Leonardo's curiosity, his wide outlook, his sense of
      the immensities, added something to his art which otherwise it
      might not have contained, and which is intensely characteristic
      of it. Who, for instance, has ever penetrated the secret of
      Leonardo's smile?--of the ineffable, mysterious, plaintive,
      and haunting smile that has fascinated and perplexed the world
      century after century in the portrait of La Gioconda? That
      unfathomable smile, with so much of mystery and with something
      of weirdness in it, was the reflection of Leonardo's mind,
      which had explored the depths and heights, and ever came back
      from the pursuit with the sense of the inscrutable Mystery
      beyond. "What is that," he asks, "which does not give itself to
      human comprehension, and which, if it did, would not exist? It
      is the infinite, which, if it could so give itself, would be
      done and ended." In the "Last Supper," says M. Müntz, "he had
      realised his ideal." Leonardo himself would not have said so.
      His was one of those lofty minds before which an unattainable
      ideal ever hovers. "It is of a truth impossible," said a friend
      of the master to him, "to conceive of faces more lovely and
      gentle than those of St. James the Great and St. James the
      Less. Accept thy misfortune, therefore, and leave thy Christ
      imperfect as He is, for otherwise, when compared with the
      Apostles, He would not be their Saviour and Master." Leonardo
      took the advice, and never finished the head of Christ. But he
      fixed the outward type of Christ for succeeding generations.
      Apart from the credit due to Leonardo as an ennobler of style
      in art, he stands out further in the history of painting as the
      first who investigated the laws of light and shade. There are
      "three methods of art, producing respectively linear designs,
      effects of light, and effects of colour. In preparing to draw
      any object, you will find that practically you have to ask
      yourself, Shall I aim at the colour of it, the light of it,
      or the lines of it? The best art comes so near nature as in a
      measure to unite all. But the best art is not, and cannot be,
      as good as nature; and the mode of its deficiency is that it
      must lose some of the colour, some of the light, or some of
      the delineation. And in consequence, there is one great school
      which says, 'We will have delineation, and as much colour and
      shade as are consistent with it.' Another, which says, 'We
      will have shade, and as much colour and delineation as are
      consistent with it.' The third, 'We will have the colour, and
      as much light and delineation as are consistent with it.' The
      second class, the Chiaroscurists, are essentially draughtsmen
      with chalk, charcoal, or single tints. Many of them paint, but
      always with some effort and pain. Leonardo is the type of them"
      (compressed from _Ariadne Florentina_, §§ 18-21).

      To his artistic genius and intellectual alertness, Leonardo
      added great personal beauty ("the radiance of his countenance,
      which was splendidly beautiful, brought cheerfulness," says
      Vasari, "to the heart of the most melancholy") and great
      physical strength. He could bend a door-knocker, we are told,
      or a horse-shoe as if it were lead. He was left-handed and
      wrote from right to left. Besides his physical strength,
      Vasari mentions his kindness and gentleness, and tells us
      how he would frequently buy caged birds from the dealers, in
      order to give them back their liberty. Scandalous accusations
      were at one time brought against him, but researches made
      in the archives during the last few years have effectually
      disposed of the charge. One curious trait in the character
      of Leonardo remains to be noticed. In his art he created a
      feminine type of extraordinary and haunting beauty. "And yet,"
      says his latest biographer, "Leonardo, like Donatello, was
      one of those exceptionally great artists in whose life the
      love of woman seems to have played no part.... The delights
      of the mind sufficed him. He himself proclaimed it in plain
      terms. _Cosa bella mortal passa e non arte._' Fair humanity
      passes, but art endures.'" This extraordinary man was the son
      of a peasant-mother, Caterina, and was born out of wedlock,
      his father being a Florentine notary; and amongst Leonardo's
      manuscripts is a record of a visit to Caterina in the hospital,
      who soon after his father's death had married in her own
      station, and of expenses paid for her funeral. His life has
      three divisions--thirty years at Florence, nearly twenty years
      at Milan, then nineteen years of wandering, till he sinks to
      rest under the protection of the King of France. (1) Leonardo
      was the pupil of Verrocchio (see 296), "a master well chosen,
      for in his earnest and discursive mind were many points of
      contact with that of his illustrious pupil." Leonardo seems
      to have retained his connection with Verrocchio until 1477,
      but the records of his Florentine period are very scanty. His
      earliest undoubted work is the unfinished "Adoration" in the
      Uffizi. To this period also belongs the head of the "Medusa" in
      that collection, celebrated in Shelley's verses--a work, says
      Mr. Pater, in which "the fascination of corruption penetrates
      in every touch its exquisitely finished beauty." (2) In 1483
      Leonardo removed to Milan to take service with Ludovico Sforza.
      He served his patron in those multifarious ways for which
      his talents fitted him,--as musician and improvisatore, as
      director of court pageants, as sculptor, painter, and civil
      and military engineer. To this Milanese period belong two of
      the master's most celebrated productions--the present picture
      and the "Last Supper," executed in oil colours on an end wall
      of the refectory in the Dominican Convent of S. Maria della
      Grazia. At Milan, Leonardo founded the famous Vincian Academy
      of Arts over which he presided, which attracted so many pupils,
      and which may be said to have established a new Milanese
      School. For his Academy he made the elaborate notes for a
      Treatise on Painting which were posthumously published.(3) In
      1500, consequent upon the flight of the Duke before the French
      army, Leonardo left Milan and returned to Florence. His stay,
      however, was not long, for he took service for a time with
      Cæsar Borgia as architect and military engineer. He was again
      in Florence in 1503, and was commissioned with Michelangelo to
      paint the Hall of Council in the Palace of the Signory. His
      subject was the Battle of Anghiari. The painting was begun
      but never completed. The cartoon, now lost, remained and
      excited the greatest admiration, "The man who had presented
      the solemn moment of the Last Supper with a dignity and pathos
      never equalled, who could portray feminine loveliness with
      a sweetness and grace peculiar to his pencil, was no less
      successful in bringing before the eye the turmoil of battle and
      the fierce passions inspired by the struggle for victory." One
      great work of his of this period (1504) happily survives--the
      famous portrait of Monna Lisa, known as La Gioconda, in the
      Louvre. For the next ten years (1506-1516), Leonardo alternated
      between Milan, Florence, and Rome. Other works of this period
      are the "St. Anne" and "St. John," also in the Louvre. In 1516
      he accompanied the French King, Francis I., to France, who
      lodged him and his faithful friend Melzi in the Château de
      Cloux, near Amboise. Three years later he died, having made
      his will (the text of which has recently been discovered) a
      week before the end--"considering the certainty of death and
      the uncertainty of the hour, of its approach." He was buried,
      by his own instructions, in the church of St. Florentin at
      Amboise. Of Leonardo as a young man, no authentic portraits
      exist. In the Royal Collection at Windsor and at Turin there
      are portraits of himself in red chalk; and on the Sacro Monte
      at Varallo, one of Gaudenzio Ferrari's sculptured figures
      is a portrait of the great master. Leonardo's drawings are
      very beautiful and numerous--the Windsor Collection being the
      richest; they show us with what infinite searching the master
      drew near to his ideals. The picture before us makes upon the
      spectator the impression of rapid and spontaneous creation;
      but the drawings for it show that it was in fact one of the
      most laborious of Leonardo's works (see on this subject Müntz's
      _Leonardo da Vinci_, i. 162 in the English translation. This
      is the best life of the master. The most penetrative study of
      Leonardo remains Mr. Pater's, in his _Renaissance_).

This beautiful picture is very characteristic of Leonardo in its
effects of light and shade, in grace and refinement of delineation, in
felicity of gesture, and in the curious beauty of the types. Leonardo
makes out of his subject a charming idyll, into which the spectator
may read his own meanings. "In St. John the Baptist," says Lomazzo,
writing in 1584, "we may see the motive of obedience and child like
veneration, as he kneels with joined hands and bends towards Christ; in
the Virgin, the feeling of happy meditation as she beholds this act;
in the angel, the idea of angelic gladness, as he ponders the joy that
shall come to the world from this mystery; and in the Infant Christ we
behold divinity and wisdom. And therefore the Virgin kneels, holding
St. John with her right hand and extending her left, and the angel
likewise supports Christ, who, seated, regards St. John and blesses
him." A modern poet, adding to the picture a beautiful thought of
his own, has suggested that in the valley of the shadow of death the
Virgin brings the soul of a dead child for her son's blessing (see an
interesting discussion of "The Louvre Sonnets of Rossetti," by W. M.
Hardinge, in _Temple Bar_, March 1891):--

    Mother, is this the darkness of the end,
        The Shadow of Death? and is that outer sea
        Infinite imminent Eternity?[212]
    And does the death-pang by man's seed sustain'd
    In Time's each instant cause thy face to bend
        Its silent prayer upon the Son, while He
        Blesses the dead with His hand silently
    To His long day which hours no more offend?
    Mother of grace, the pass is difficult,
        Keen as these rocks, and the bewildered souls
          Throng it like echoes, blindly shuddering through.
        Thy name, O Lord, each spirit's voice extols,
          Whose peace abides in the dark avenue
    Amid the bitterness of things occult.

  D. G. ROSSETTI: _Sonnets and Ballads_.

The landscape from which the picture takes its title is remarkable.
Leonardo, a pioneer in so many other things, was a pioneer also in
Alpine exploration, and has even been credited with a first ascent
in the Monte Rosa range. However this may be, it is clear from his
pictures and drawings that his mineralogical and geological studies
attracted him to the curious rocks and peaks which he had observed
among the mountains of North Italy.[213] "In him," says Mr. Pater,
"first appears the taste for what is _bizarre_ or _recherché_ in
landscape; hollow places full of the green shadow of bituminous rocks,
ridged reefs of trap-rock which cut the water into quaint sheets of
light; all solemn effects of moving water; you may follow it springing
from its distant source among the rocks on the heath of the 'Madonna
of the Balances,' passing as a little fall into the treacherous calm
of the 'Madonna of the Lake,' next, as a goodly river below the cliffs
of the 'Madonna of the Rocks,' stealing out in a network of divided
streams in 'La Gioconda' to the sea-shore of the 'St. Anne.' It is the
landscape not of dreams or of fancy, but of places far withdrawn."
Notice also the flowers of the foreground. "Leonardo paints flowers
with such curious felicity that different writers have attributed to
him a fondness for particular flowers, as Clement the cyclamen, and Rio
the jasmine; while at Venice there is a stray leaf from his portfolio
dotted all over with studies of violets and the white rose." "This
work," says Ford Madox Brown, "seems to have been laid in entirely
with ivory black, which, as its wont is, has come through the upper
painting to the extent of leaving only to look at a picture in black,
heightened, in the lights, with a little faint yellow. So much is true,
and also that the rocks, from which the picture takes its name, are of
the most singular formations, such as no modern geologist would care to
lecture on, the herbage being much the same as to its botanical value.
But in spite of these and other objections, such is the intrinsic
power of the work in style of drawing and beauty of expression, that
nothing known, not by the greatest masters, can do more than hold their
own against it. Just stand a little way off, study the heads, and see
what they tell you--most supreme master of the human face divine"
(_Magazine of Art_, 1890, p. 135).

      There is, as everyone knows, a very similar picture to this
      in the Louvre; and during the last few years an Anglo-French
      dispute has raged furiously in artistic circles with regard
      to the authenticity, priority, and relative merits of the two
      pictures. The pedigree of our picture is singularly complete,
      and there can be no doubt that it is a veritable work by the
      hand of Leonardo. It agrees minutely with the description given
      by Lomazzo (in 1584) of a painting by Leonardo, which in his
      time was in the chapel of the Conception in the church of S.
      Francesco at Milan. The picture in the Louvre differs from
      Lomazzo's description in the one essential difference between
      the two pictures. In the Louvre picture the angel looks towards
      us and points to St. John, thus connecting the spectator with
      what is taking place. In our picture, on the other hand, there
      is no such connecting link. The action is complete within
      itself. The spectator is not invited to participate in what is
      to him a divine vision. It is clear therefore that our picture
      is the one which, in 1584, was in S. Francesco at Milan, and
      which passed for a work by Leonardo. External evidence has come
      to light during the last few years proving what had hitherto
      only been taken for granted, namely, that Leonardo did execute
      the central composition of the altar-piece for that church.
      This is a memorial from Ambrogio di Predis and Leonardo da
      Vinci to the Duke of Milan, praying him to intervene in a
      dispute which had arisen between the petitioners and the
      brotherhood "della Concezione" with regard to the price to
      be paid for certain works of art furnished by them for the
      chapel of the brotherhood in S. Francesco. The brotherhood had
      priced the oil-painting of Our Lady executed by Leonardo at
      only 25 ducats, whereas it was worth 100 ducats, as shown by
      the account and proved by the fact that certain persons were
      found willing to purchase it at that price. No evidence is
      forthcoming as to the settlement of the dispute. We have then
      these facts: that Leonardo painted a picture of Our Lady for S.
      Francesco, that such a picture was in the church in 1584, and
      that our picture precisely agrees with Lomazzo's description of
      it. The picture remained in the chapel until some time between
      1751 and 1787. In the latter year Bianconi, in a guide-book to
      Milan, states that the two side panels (1661, 1662) were still
      there, but that the picture "by the hand of Leonardo" had been
      removed. In 1777 our picture was brought to England by Gavin
      Hamilton, and sold by him to the Marquis of Lansdowne, from
      whom it afterwards passed by exchange into the collection of
      the Earl of Suffolk at Charlton Park. From Lord Suffolk it was
      bought in 1880 for the National Gallery, the price being £9000.

      It will thus be seen that the external evidence in favour of
      this picture being a veritable work by Leonardo is unusually
      strong. Internal evidence is more difficult to bring to the
      test, resting as it does on æsthetic considerations, the
      force of which depends on the authority of the witness and
      the competence of the court to which he appeals. Several
      critics, it may be explained, had convinced themselves long
      ago that the Louvre picture was the original and ours a copy.
      The discovery of the new document above referred to seemed at
      first to strengthen the authenticity of our picture. But the
      point was ingeniously turned by the following gratuitous and
      entirely unsupported theory. Leonardo, says Dr. Richter, _must
      have_ sold the original to the French king, and let the church
      have a copy at the low price agreed upon. Supporting this
      theory in turn by internal evidence, the enemies of our picture
      declare it to be "an entirely wretched performance" (Richter);
      "superficial," "insipid," "heavy," "woolly," "lacking in
      elevation," "feeble," in short, "a work in which we do not
      feel the real presence of the master" (Müntz). Those who thus
      disparage our picture suppose it to be a copy by Ambrogio di
      Predis. To this theory, an effective retort has been given by
      the purchase for the Gallery of the two wings that used to
      flank the central picture. It is impossible to suppose that
      the painter of No. 1662 was capable of producing our picture,
      of which the skilful delineation and mysterious beauty delight
      all spectators who have no preconceived theory in the matter.
      It should be stated that some of the faults found with our
      picture are admitted by the authorities of the Gallery. "The
      ill-drawn gilt _nimbi_ over the heads of the three principal
      figures, as well as the clumsy reed cross which rests on St.
      John's shoulder, are additions of a comparatively late period,
      probably of the 17th century." Again, "the hand of the Virgin
      resting on St. John's shoulder is obviously the mere daub of a
      picture restorer."

      Those who support the authenticity of our picture do not feel
      called upon to carry the war into the enemy's camp, though both
      Sir Frederick Burton and Sir Edward Poynter notice various
      defects and repaintings in the Louvre picture, and the former
      points out that its pedigree does not extend back beyond 1642.
      The fact seems to be that neither picture can properly be
      called a copy of the other. The most striking difference--that
      in the attitude of the angel--is fundamental, and not such
      as a copyist would venture to make. There are many other
      differences; indeed no single part of the groups is really
      alike; and those differences (as Sir Edward Poynter shows) are
      such as an artist would make in working from different studies.
      Studies for portions of both pictures exist. A further question
      in dispute is which of the two versions is the earlier. To
      Sir Edward Poynter "it seems that our picture shows traces of
      Leonardo's training in the school of Verrocchio, and that it is
      the Louvre picture which has more of the idealised refinement
      of type on which Luini formed his style." To Mr. Claude
      Phillips, on the other hand, the angel of the Louvre looking
      straight out of the picture seems to be essentially Florentine,
      and to belong specifically to the school of Verrocchio (see 296
      in our Gallery). The variation in the angel's attitude, as
      given in our version, is in conception a distinct improvement:
      it makes the picture more self-contained. "One can imagine,"
      says Mr. MacColl, "Leonardo, on second thoughts, judging that
      the Louvre angel drew too much attention to himself by his
      pointing hand, and was better within the picture with downcast
      eyes than when inviting the attention of the spectator by his
      regard." (The very interesting discussion summarised above is
      contained in the following English publications: Dr. Richter,
      in the _Art Journal_ for June 1894; replied to by Sir Edward
      Poynter in the same magazine for August, and by Sir F. Burton
      in the _Nineteenth Century_ for July 1894. See also Eugene
      Müntz's _Leonardo da Vinci_, vol. i. ch. vi.; the _Catalogue of
      Milanese Pictures_ at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1898, pp.
      li.-lvi.; Mr. Claude Phillips in the _National Review_, Dec.
      1894; and "D. S. M." in the _Saturday Review_, May 28, 1898,
      and Feb. 18, 1899. The English articles contain references to
      the articles on Dr. Richter's side by Motta, Frizzoni, and
      others.)


1094. PORTRAIT OF A MAN.

  _Ascribed to Sir Antonio More_ (Flemish: 1512-1578).

      Antonij Mor (commonly known in this country as Sir Antonio
      More, though when and by whom he was knighted does not appear)
      succeeded Holbein as the principal portrait-painter settled in
      England. "Mor's style," it has been said, "so much resembles
      that of Holbein as to frequently create a doubt to which of
      them a portrait is to be attributed; but he is not so clear
      and delicate in his colouring, perhaps from having painted so
      much in Spain, as that master." He was born at Antwerp and
      studied under Schorel (see 720). An example of his earlier
      manner, dated 1544, is in the Berlin Museum. Mor afterwards
      travelled in Italy, and quickly emancipated himself from the
      dry manner of Schorel, as his portrait of Cardinal Granvelle
      at Vienna, done in 1549, shows. His portraits from this time
      forward are remarkable for their "unpretentious dignity."
      Cardinal Granvelle introduced him to the service of Charles
      V., by whom he was sent to Portugal to paint some of the royal
      family. He was in the service of Queen Mary from 1554 to 1558.
      She presented him with a hundred pounds and a gold chain, and
      allowed him a hundred pounds a quarter. He was also largely
      employed by the Howards and the Russells and others, grandees
      of the court. One of his portraits of the Queen is in the Duke
      of Wellington's Collection at Apsley House. When Philip went
      to Spain to take possession of the throne, Mor accompanied
      him, and for some time basked in the full sunshine of royal
      favour. Suddenly he withdrew to Brussels, for some cause which
      has never been satisfactorily explained. According to one
      story, the king, visiting Mor's studio, laid his hand upon
      his shoulder as he stood at the easel--a familiarity which
      the artist returned by rudely rapping the royal knuckles with
      his maulstick, or daubing them with carmine. The officers of
      the Inquisition took advantage of this incident, it is said,
      to vent their jealous wrath against the painter. He finally
      established himself at Antwerp, his declining years being spent
      in ease and opulence--the fruits of successful industry at the
      courts of England, Portugal, and Spain. He is described to
      us as "very much the courtier, and a gentleman of grave and
      majestic manners"--a description borne out by the fine portrait
      of himself at Althorp.


1095. PORTRAIT OF ANNA MARIA SCHURMANN.

  _Jan Lievens_ (Dutch: 1607-1674).

      Lievens, painter and engraver, "was a comrade of Rembrandt, but
      conceived a strong admiration for Van Dyck, traces of which
      are to be found in his portraits" (Havard: _The Dutch School_,
      p. 115). From 1631 to 1635 he was in England, where he painted
      the portraits of Charles I. and his Queen, and of several of
      the nobility. He afterwards worked at Antwerp, Leyden, and
      Amsterdam.

This lady (born at Cologne in 1607) was one of the most remarkable
personages of her time. So great was the renown of her learning that
Queen Christina of Sweden went to visit her. She was familiar with
German, Dutch, French, Italian, and English; and was a good scholar in
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic. She corresponded
with some of the most erudite men of the day, and excelled in many
of the fine arts. Late in life she fell under the influence of the
noted Pietist leader, Jean de la Badie, whose cause she persuaded the
Princess Palatine Elizabeth to espouse. After his death (in 1674) she
collected his disciples at Wierwerd, where she herself died four years
later in complete destitution.


1096. A HUNTING SCENE.

  _Jan Baptist Weenix_ (Dutch: 1621-1660).

      Weenix, born at Amsterdam, was the son of an architect. His
      master in painting was Abraham Bloemaert. Early in life he
      married the daughter of Gilles de Hondecoeter; his nephew
      Melchior Hondecoeter (No. 202) was afterwards his pupil. In
      1642 his desire to see Italy caused him to leave his young
      wife and to carry his palette and brushes beyond the Alps. He
      promised to be absent only four months. He remained in Italy
      four years. While there he studied the coast-scenes, the
      people, and the architecture; "the result of his observations
      being the stately scenes, half real, half conventional, of
      which good examples are to be found in the Wallace Collection."
      On his return to Holland, Weenix was largely employed, first at
      Amsterdam, and afterwards at Utrecht. In this country his name
      is chiefly associated with pictures of dead game, but subjects
      of this class--in which his son (238) also excelled--were only
      the predilection of his later years.


1098. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Montagna_ (Venetian: about 1450-1523). _See_ 802.

The Child lies asleep on a window-sill. The Mother stands in an
attitude of devotion. A picture of fine feeling, and characteristic of
the artist's "exalted naturalism."


1100. A SCENE IN A PLAY.

  _Pietro Longhi_ (Venetian: 1702-1762).

      Pietro Longhi, who studied in Bologna, but afterwards settled
      in his native Venice, was one of the four masters who made
      a partial revival of Venetian painting in the eighteenth
      century--the other three being Tiepolo (1692-1769, see 1192),
      Canaletto (1697-1768, see 127), and Guardi (1712-1793, see
      210). Longhi represented the Vanity Fair of Venice at his epoch
      with fidelity and kindly feeling. He has been called "the
      Italian Hogarth," but he is greatly inferior in every respect
      to that painter. Moreover he was not a satirist like Hogarth,
      and there is more truth in the description of him as "the
      Goldoni of painters"--Goldoni, the popular playwright, with
      whom Longhi was nearly contemporary, and who, like him, just
      reflects "the shade and shine of common life, nor renders as it
      rolls grandeur and gloom." "Longhi used to tell Goldoni that
      they were brethren in art. Longhi surveyed human life with the
      same kindly glance and the same absence of gravity or depth of
      intuition as Goldoni. They both studied nature, but nature only
      in her genial moods. They both sincerely aimed at truth, but
      avoided truths which were sinister or painful" (J. A. Symonds,
      in the _Century Guild Hobby Horse_, April 1889). Longhi was
      the son of a goldsmith, and as a lad showed unusual skill in
      designs for ornamental plate: hence the affectionate partiality
      in his pictures for the minutest details of decorative
      furniture, dress, and articles of luxury.

The engraved portrait on the wall is inscribed "Gerardo Sagredo di
Morei," and perhaps the picture is a group of the Sagredo family, for
whose palace in Venice Longhi painted some frescoes in 1734. The family
preferred, perhaps, to be taken in the characters of a scene in a play
of Goldoni's or some other popular writer--just as in the "Vicar of
Wakefield" they resolved to be drawn together, in one large historical
piece. "This would be cheaper, since one frame would serve for all, and
it would be infinitely more genteel; for all families of any taste were
now drawn in the same manner."


1101. MASKED VISITORS AT A MENAGERIE.

  _Pietro Longhi_ (Venetian: 1702-1762). _See 1100._

A characteristic glimpse of Venetian life a hundred years ago. "At that
time," it has been said, "perhaps people did not amuse themselves more
at Venice than elsewhere, but they amused themselves differently. It
is this seizing on peculiarities, on local and characteristic details,
that makes Longhi's little canvases so curious." Here he shows us two
ladies in dominoes, escorted by a cavalier, at a menagerie. The trainer
exhibits a rhinoceros to them.


1102. THE CHEVALIER ANDREA TRON.

  _Pietro Longhi_ (Venetian: 1702-1762). _See 1100._

The portrait of "a procurator of St. Mark's," a dignity in the Venetian
State second only to that of Doge. The procurators were charged with
the legal administration of all the affairs of St. Mark's, and their
official palaces (the Procuratie) adjoined the church. They were
further charged with the care of orphans, and with the administration
of others who cared to put themselves "in chancery." The office was
thus not unlike that of an English Lord Chancellor, and there is a
"grandmotherliness" about this procurator that makes one think he must
have discharged some of his duties well. The broad golden stole over
his shoulder shows him to have been also a knight of the order of the
_Stola d'Oro_, as the Procurator's stole was of crimson velvet. The
picture is in its original frame, surmounted by the armorial bearings
of the Tron family.


1103. VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH SAINTS.

  _Fiorenzo di Lorenzo_ (Umbrian: 1472-1521).

      These are the dates not of his birth and death (which are
      unknown), but of the earliest and latest events recorded of
      him. In 1472 he was commissioned to paint an altar-piece, the
      principal parts of which may now be seen in the Pinacoteca
      of Perugia, and he was elected a member of the Town Council
      of Perugia. In 1521 he was commissioned to value some works
      by another painter. The resemblance of his style to that of
      Benozzo Gozzoli may be seen by comparing No. 283. Fiorenzo's
      work is best seen in Perugia, where he reveals himself as an
      artist of great feeling and ability. Especially remarkable
      is the series of scenes from the life of Bernardino (some
      reproduced by the Arundel Society). (See for notices of this
      painter Morelli's _German Galleries_, p. 263, and S. Brinton's
      _Renaissance in Italian Art_, pt. iii. pp. 108, 141).

The accompanying figures are--in front of the throne, St. Francis (on
the right of the Child), St Bernardino, a saint of Siena (on the left),
and in smaller size the donor of the altar-piece. This is one of the
earliest examples in the Gallery of the introduction of portraits in
this way. In the left-hand compartment St. John the Baptist; and in
the right-hand one St. Bartholomew, carrying his familiar attribute--a
blood-stained knife, the instrument of his martyrdom. The compartments
containing the figures of St. John the Baptist and St. Bartholomew
were originally at one side of the central panel, but have been placed
on each side for symmetry, the corresponding twin panels being lost.
Notice the beautiful pattern engraved on the gold background.


1104. THE ANNUNCIATION.

  _Giannicola Manni_ (Umbrian: 1475-1544).

      Born at Città della Pieve, the native town of Perugino, whose
      pupil and assistant he became. Several of his works may be
      seen in the Pinacoteca at Perugia, of which town he was a
      magistrate. He also executed the frescoes in the chapel
      attached to the Sala del Cambio.

Notice the quaint "arabesques" on the Virgin's prie-dieu, or
praying-stool; they are characteristic of this painter.


1105. THE PROTHONOTARY-APOSTOLIC, JULIANO.

  _Lorenzo Lotto_ (Venetian: 1480-1555). _See 699._

See for the subject under 1024. "A smooth-shaven old man with a face
that one would not be in the least surprised to see to-day anywhere,
and least of all in England. As a portrait, it is the quietest of all
those by Lotto known to me, and--if I may be allowed the word--the most
'gentlemanly'" (Berenson: _Lorenzo Lotto_, p. 189).


1106. THE RESURRECTION.

  _Francesco Mantegna_ (Paduan: about 1470-1517). _See 639._

Notice the classical sarcophagus of marble. The resurrection banner is
affixed to a tall rod surmounted by a cross composed of golden balls.


1107. THE CRUCIFIXION.

  _Niccolò da Foligno_ (Umbrian: 1430-1492).

      The pietism, characteristic of the Umbrian School generally,
      is conspicuous in Niccolò, of whom Vasari remarks that "the
      expression of grief in his angels, and the tears they shed,
      are so natural that I do not believe any artist, however
      excellent he might be, could have done it much better." But
      he often overstrained this expression into grimace. He shows,
      says Morelli, the "tendency to exaggeration which marks the
      inhabitant of a small provincial town." He was capable,
      however, of giving grace and beauty to his female heads and
      heads of angels. Examples may be seen in the Brera at Milan,
      and in the Vatican Gallery. It is probable that Niccolò owed
      a good deal to Benozzo Gozzoli, who from 1452 to 1457 was
      working not far from Foligno (see Morelli's _German Galleries_,
      p. 258). Niccolò is often called Niccolò _Alunno_. The origin
      of this mistake, made first by Vasari, is that on one of his
      pictures he is described as "Nicholaus _alumnus_ Flogging"
      (Niccolò, a native, or alumnus, of Foligno).

In this picture the artist seems to revel in the depiction of emotion,
and (as it were) in "piling up the agony." There is the same pleasure
here in the use of a new gift--that of expressing emotion--as in 583,
in that of expressing perspective. The central scene of the Crucifixion
is surrounded by the Agony in the Garden, Christ bearing his Cross, the
Descent from the Cross, and the Resurrection. Note as characteristic of
the _genius loci_ in the Umbrian School that St. Francis of Assisi is
kneeling at the foot of the cross.

The acquisition of this picture by the National Gallery (in 1881) had
a curious history. It was formerly in the convent of Santa Chiara at
Aquila, and on the suppression of the convent became the property of
the State. But by the Archbishop's orders it was successfully secreted.
On his death, some years later, it was conveyed to the house of one of
the canons of the cathedral, by whom it was sold to a dealer in Rome.
The dealer made a good thing out of it; he bought it for £260, and
sold it (with another small picture) to our National Gallery for £1200.
The Italian Government instituted a prosecution for theft, which,
however, was subsequently dropped for civil proceedings for damages
against all the persons concerned, "except the Englishman who, it is
believed, bought the picture in good faith."


1108. THE VIRGIN ENTHRONED.

  _Unknown_ (Sienese School: late 15th century).


1109. THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN.

  _Niccolò di Buonaccorso_ (Sienese: died 1388).

      Of this painter, who worked and held several offices at Siena,
      none of the works is traceable except this signed picture
      and some fragments (also signed, and dated 1387) in a little
      village church near Siena.

"Remarkable, amongst other things, for the wonderful elaboration of
the gold ornaments on the dresses, and the attempt to give an Oriental
character to the scene by the introduction of the palm-tree, the
carpet, and the dark-faced player on the kettledrums. It is interesting
also for its notes from real life in the figure of the child, the
faces of some of the spectators in the background, the window-openings
with their poles, the figures on the right under the blind, and
the flower-pot on the sill on the left" (Monkhouse: _The Italian
Pre-Raphaelites_, p. 17). For some remarks on the subject, see under
1317.


1109a. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _A. R. Mengs_ (German: 1728-1779).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

      Anton Raphael Mengs, the son of a court painter at Dresden--a
      post to which the boy afterwards succeeded--was taken when a
      boy to Rome and set to study the works of the great masters.
      He became the most celebrated representative of the Eclectic
      School of painting in the eighteenth century, and played a
      great part in the early days of the classic revival of that
      period. In his writings, in Spanish, Italian, and German, he
      elaborated his eclectic theory--the attainment of perfection by
      the combination of diverse excellences, Greek designs with the
      expression of Raphael, the chiaroscuro of Correggio, and the
      colour of Titian. He was an intimate friend of Winckelmann,
      who constantly wrote at his dictation. His work was eagerly
      sought after, both at Rome and at the courts of Dresden and
      Madrid, and his books enjoyed a very wide circulation.

A cartoon, executed in black chalk.


1113. A LEGENDARY SUBJECT.

  _Pietro Lorenzetti_ (Sienese: died 1348).

      This painter was the elder brother of Ambrogio Lorenzetti
      (1147), and first appears as an artist in 1305. Many of his
      works, or fragments of them, may still be seen in and around
      Siena. Among the best is a triptych in the sacristy of the
      Cathedral representing the birth of the Virgin. "A long series
      of frescoes, representing different incidents in the Passion,
      have recently been rescued from whitewash in the church of S.
      Francesco. They are remarkable for their vigour and harmony,
      and show Pietro to have possessed great talents both as a
      colourist and as a draughtsman" (Bryan's _Dictionary_).

Probably illustrative of some incident in the life of a saint--of
Bishop Sansovino, perhaps, the patron saint of Siena--in which the
forces of the Christian and pagan religions were opposed. On one side
is a pagan priest bearing a statue, supposed, from the apple in its
hand, to be that of Venus. On the other is a Christian bishop engaged
in some ecclesiastical function.


1114-1118. THE FIVE SENSES.

  _Coques_ (Flemish: 1618-1684). _See 821._

Coques pays a pretty compliment to one of his fellow-artists Robert
van Hoecke (who, like a greater man, Leonardo, was an authority
on fortifications as well as a painter), in painting his portrait
as typical of "Sight." The figures in the rest of the series, if
portraits, have not been identified.


1119. MADONNA AND CHILD WITH SAINTS.

  _Ercole di Giulio Grandi_ (Ferrarese: died 1531).

      Of this painter, one of the best of the Ferrarese school,
      very little is known, beyond the fact that he was in the
      service of the ducal house at Este. The identification of his
      works is also very uncertain, for Vasari, unaware that two
      painters of the Grandi family had borne the name of Ercole
      (see 1127), classed the works of both under the same head. The
      present picture is not signed, and was first identified as
      the younger Ercole's by Morelli. This Ercole, son of Giulio
      Cesare de' Grandi, studied under Francia and Lorenzo Costa,
      to the latter of whom, indeed, this picture was attributed in
      the foundling hospital of Ferrara, from which it comes. Like
      Francia, Ercole combined the practice of other arts with that
      of painting--being a gold-beater and modeller, as well as a
      painter--a conjunction which is seen in this picture, with its
      wealth of decorative accessories. He disputes with Garofalo the
      title of "the Raphael of Ferrara," a description which this
      splendid picture goes some way to justify.

A picture notable alike for its central idea and for its wealth of
decorative detail. In the group of the infant Saviour (a very finely
drawn figure) standing on the Virgin's knees in the act of benediction,
with St. William on the right of the throne and on the left St. John
the Baptist, is an imaginative representation of Christianity--the
soldier of Christ, with his armour on him, but bareheaded, and with his
hand on the sword, on one side; the saint, with the Cross and the Book,
on the other. The accessories are full of decorative inventiveness,
but every detail is full of thought; they are an epitome, as it were,
of all the decorative arts of the time. Note first, in the walnut
wood pedestal of the throne, that the frieze at the top is a graceful
arrangement of dolphins, emblems of love and affection, and the base,
of stags and swans ("As pants the hart for cooling streams, so pants
my soul for thee, O God"). In its central panel is an alto-relievo in
ivory, with Adam and Eve on either side of the Tree of Knowledge. On
each of the receding panels is a white marble medallion of the turbaned
head of a prophet. On the _predella_ below there are, (1) beginning
on the spectator's right, the Nativity, (2) the Presentation in the
Temple, (3) the Massacre of the Innocents, (4) the Flight into Egypt,
and (5) Christ disputing with the Doctors. The ornamental details of
the marble _baldacchino_ (or canopy), like those of the throne, are all
symbolic; thus the archivolt is composed of choiring cherubim separated
by pots of lilies, and the spandrils of the arch are occupied by
medallions of the angel Gabriel and the Virgin (G. T. Robinson in _Art
Journal_, May 1886, p. 150).


1120. ST. JEROME IN THE DESERT.

  _Cima da Conegliano_ (Venetian: 1460-1518). _See 300._

Another of the numerous St. Jerome pictures: see under 694 and 227.
The saint has his usual company of animals. His lion is frowning,
somewhat with the same expression as in 227--as if to deprecate the
penance which his master is about to inflict on himself. On the branch
of the tree above is a hawk, looking on with the expression of a
superior person--one quite too sagacious to countenance such madness.
Notice also the serpent which crawls from beneath the rock on which
the Cross is placed. The picture, says Mr. Gilbert, "is rich, even
brilliant, in colouring, and if there is a touch of oddity in the house
perched upon a crag, there is loveliness in the mountain range, and in
the amber and lemon tints that streak the evening sky" (_Landscape in
Art_, p. 340).


1121. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.

  _Unknown_ (Venetian: time of Bellini).
  _See also_ (p. xx)

This portrait, when it hung in Hamilton Palace, used to be called a
Leonardo. Sir W. Armstrong (_Notes on the National Gallery_, p. 24)
gives it unhesitatingly to Basaiti (see 599).


1122. ST. JEROME.

  _Domenico Theotocopuli_ (Spanish: 1548-1625).

      This artist, called "Il Greco," was of Greek descent and is
      supposed to have studied in Venice. He was said to have been a
      pupil of Titian, but his impetuous style seems rather to have
      been modelled on that of Tintoretto. He settled at Toledo in
      1575, and there acquired a great reputation. His picture of
      "The Parting of Our Lord's Raiment," which still adorns the
      sacristy of the cathedral at Toledo, is, says Stirling-Maxwell,
      "truly admirable in drawing and composition; and the colouring
      is on the whole rich and effective, although it is here and
      there laid on in that spotted, streaky manner which afterwards
      became the great and prominent defect of El Greco's style."
      The picture in our Gallery No. 1457 in its energetic action
      but faulty drawing is characteristic of him. The exaggerated
      elongation of his figures is one of his common weaknesses.
      The "St. Maurice with his Theban Legion," which he painted
      for Philip II. in the Escorial is "little less extravagant
      and atrocious than the massacre which it recorded"; this was
      painted in 1580. A year or two later he executed the "Burial
      of the Count of Orgaz" in the church of St. Tomé at Toledo.
      This is usually esteemed his masterpiece. "The artist or lover
      of art who has once beheld it will never, as he rambles among
      the winding streets of the ancient city, pass the pretty brick
      belfry of that church without turning aside to gaze upon its
      superb picture once more." Theotocopuli has been described
      as "an artist who alternated between reason and delirium,
      and displayed his great genius only at lucid intervals." His
      portraits, of which there are several in the Royal Gallery at
      Madrid, are often mannered; but occasionally very fine. Into
      the portrait of his daughter (now at Keir) he put all his
      skill; her face, with markedly Greek features, is "one of the
      most beautiful that death ever dimmed and that the pencil ever
      rescued from the grave." Il Greco was much employed both as
      sculptor and architect. He was a man of wit and learning, and
      is said to have written on the three arts which he professed
      (_Annals of the Artists of Spain_, ch. v.).

This picture passed when in the Hamilton Collection for the work of
Titian. The inscription on the book, "Cornaro aet suae 100-1566,"
is interpolated. The picture appears to be one of those realistic
representations of St. Jerome of which there are other examples by
Theotocopuli.


1123. VENUS, ADONIS, AND MYRRHA.

  _School of Giorgione_ (Venetian: 16th century). _See 269._

A picture of the golden age, entirely in the Giorgionesque spirit, and
often attributed to Giorgione himself[214]--a vision of a land bathed
in perpetual light and sparkling with golden sunshine. The legendary
subject which forms the theme of this characteristic pastoral is the
story of Myrrha, which may be read in Dryden's translations from Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_. The principal group is Venus and her favourite Adonis
(see under 34). He was the son of Myrrha, whose legend is the subject
of several small groups. On the right is a woman fleeing from a man
who pursues her, sword in hand; these represent Myrrha and her father
Cinyras. Farther on the woman is on her knees; here Myrrha is praying
to the gods to transform her--

    ... Since my life the living will profane
    And since my death the happy dead will stain,
    Some other form to wretched Myrrha give,
    Nor let her wholly die, nor wholly live.

A third group shows the answer to her prayer: she is transferred into
the myrrh tree, whose "precious drops her name retain," while the
wood-nymphs receive her new-born babe, Adonis. In the background on the
left is represented the death of Adonis; Venus is lamenting over his
body and changing his blood into the anemone. The group in the clouds
may represent Cupid accidentally wounding his mother.


1124. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

  _Filippino Lippi_ (Florentine: 1457-1504). _See 293._
  _See also_ (p. xx)

      By some ascribed to Botticelli.[215] "There is an unmistakable
      drawing for it in the Uffizi Collection (No. 210), which is
      there ascribed to Botticelli, and which I, for one, am not at
      all inclined to take away from him. My own opinion is that
      there was no painter of the time who could have given so
      poetically conceived a background as we have in No. 1124; the
      drawing of some of the figures also speaks of itself" (Mr.
      Maurice Hewlett in the _Academy_, January 9, 1892).

For two other more highly-finished pictures of the same subject also
ascribed to this master see 592 and 1033. This picture, with others
from the Hamilton Collection, was in the "Old Masters" Exhibition
of 1873. "The 'Adoration of the Magi,'" wrote Ruskin to Mr. Fairfax
Murray, "had prettiness in it, but was poor stuff."


1125. SUMMER AND AUTUMN.

  _Andrea Mantegna_[216] (Paduan: 1431-1506). _See 274._

Summer holds a sieve for sifting the corn which she ripens. Autumn
raises a goblet of wine to her lips.


1126. THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN.

  _Botticelli_ (Florentine: 1447-1510). _See 1034._
  _See also_ (p. xx)

A picture with an interesting history. It was painted by
Botticelli[217] when he was a young man, for Matteo Palmieri (a
prominent Florentine citizen). This Matteo and his wife are here
represented on either side of the tomb in the foreground. The patron
assisted Botticelli in working out the design; and between them
they made some modifications in theology, which brought them into
trouble--so early did Sandro's reforming work begin. The story is thus
told, and the picture described, by Vasari:--

      "In the church of San Pietro (Florence) the master painted
      a picture for Matteo Palmieri with a very large number
      of figures. The subject of this work, which is near the
      side-door, is the Assumption of Our Lady, and the zones or
      circles of heaven are there painted in their order. The
      Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Apostles, the Evangelists, the
      Martyrs, the Confessors, the Doctors, the Virgins, and the
      Hierarchies; all which was executed by Sandro according to
      the design furnished to him by Matteo, who was a very learned
      and able man. The whole work was conducted and finished with
      the most admirable skill and care; at the foot of it was
      the portrait of Matteo kneeling, with that of his wife. But
      although the picture is exceedingly beautiful and ought to have
      put envy to shame, yet there were found certain malevolent
      and censorious persons who, not being able to affix any other
      blame to the work, declared that Matteo and Sandro had erred
      gravely in that matter, and had fallen into grievous heresy.
      Now, whether this be true or not, let none expect the judgment
      of that question from me; it shall suffice me to note that the
      figures executed by Sandro in that work are entirely worthy of
      praise, and that the pains he took in depicting those circles
      of the heavens must have been very great, to say nothing of
      the angels mingled with the other figures, or of the various
      foreshortenings, all which are designed in a very good manner"
      (ii. 233).

Matteo Palmieri was the author of a poem called "The City of
Life,"[218] in which he adopted Origen's thesis that the human race
was an incarnation of those angels who in the revolt of Lucifer were
neither for God nor for his enemies, and explained how the soul of
man could work its way back through the spheres to the very seat
of deity. This "heresy" interprets (says Mr. Pater) much of the
peculiar sentiment with which Botticelli infuses his profane and
sacred persons,--neither all human, nor all divine (see above under
275). It was ingeniously suggested, as we shall see, in this picture,
and was entirely in accord with those "Neo-Platonic" ideas in which
Botticelli, as a member of the Medici circle, was well versed. Matteo
seems to have been afraid that his poem might bring him into trouble
owing to its heretical views on the nature of angels, for he presented
his MS. to the Art of the Notaries in Florence, sealed and under the
express condition that it should not be opened, "so long as he lived
imprisoned in this body." He died in 1478, and his poem fell under the
expected censure. Botticelli's picture, as Vasari says, shared this
fate. The painting bears evidence of intentional injury, the faces
of the donor and his wife having been scored through; nor did some
of the apostles escape the wrath of these iconoclasts. Attempts at
restoration were made at some subsequent period. As the portrait of a
heretic might not be exhibited in a Roman Catholic church, the picture
was covered up, and the chapel in which it stood was closed to public
worship. Ultimately the book was declared innocuous, and the chapel was
re-opened. The picture, however, had already been, or was afterwards,
removed from the family chapel of the Palmieri to their villa. On
the death of the last heir, it passed into the hands of a Florentine
dealer who sold it to the 11th Duke of Hamilton. At the disposal of the
Hamilton Collection in 1882 it was bought for the National Gallery.

The picture was doubtless designed as an illustration of the closing
canto of "The City of Life," in which Matteo supposes himself
conducted by the Cumæan Sibyl through the Elysian Fields to Heaven.
The ostensible subject is the Assumption into Heaven of the Virgin.
On earth the apostles are represented gathered around the Virgin's
tomb, from which "annunciation lilies" are growing; while she is in
heaven kneeling in adoration before the Saviour, who has an open
book inscribed with the mystic letters Α and Ω: "I am Alpha and
Omega, the beginning and the end." Around the Virgin and Christ are
all the hierarchies of heaven, arranged, according to the scheme of
the theologians, in three separate tiers. Nearest to Christ are the
seraphs (red), cherubs (blue), and thrones (gold); these are conceived
as absorbed in perpetual love and adoration round the throne of God,
and are represented therefore as with heads only (the attribute of
spirit) and wings ("swift as thought"). In relation with mankind come
the remaining orders--the dominations, virtues, powers (these last
with sceptres in their hands), and in the lowest of the three, tiers,
archangels, princedoms, and angels (with their wands). "The black vases
with golden borders in the hands of some of the angels are probably
meant for the 'golden vials full of the wrath of God' (Revelations
xv. 7). Near them there are other angels, who in the attitude of
expectation point upward with their sticks; while those in the lowest
circle point down, and at the same time seem to invite those who hold
vials to pour them out upon the city of Florence" (Richter's _Italian
Art in the National Gallery_, p. 28). Everywhere amongst the angelic
host are the blessed dead, and it is here that the views of Matteo's
poem found expression. We have seen in Botticelli's "Nativity" (1034)
the same intercourse of men and angels, with reference there to the
reconciling power of the "Logos." Among the cherubs, we may decipher
St. James with the pilgrim staff, St. Andrew with his cross, St.
Peter with the key, and St. Mary Magdalen with the casket. It is
interesting to note Botticelli's estimate of degrees in the scale
of spiritual excellence. For instance, St. Catherine of Siena is in
the lowest ring among the Angels, but St. Bernard is in the third
with Principalities; Moses is among Powers, so are St. Lawrence, St.
Stephen, and St. Catherine of Alexandria; Virtues hold St. Bonaventura,
St. Dominic, and St. Paul; St. Francis with the Evangelists is higher,
in Dominations; in the highest _Triplicitie_, as Spenser puts it, there
are men--including the Baptist--mingled with the Cherubim. The angels
are represented throughout as ministering spirits; and nothing in the
picture is prettier than the way in which the angels are calling upon
the saints to "enter into the joy of their Lord"; note, for instance,
the white angel on the right in the lowest tier, and the saint in black
and red. She will teach to him

    The songs I sing here; which his voice
      Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
    And find some knowledge at each pause,
      Or some new thing to know.

  D. G. ROSSETTI: _The Blessed Damozel_.

There are many charming single figures; note, for instance, two angels
in the lower tier in the centre; and all are characteristic of the
new type of angels which Botticelli introduced--forsaking entirely
the conventional idealism of earlier religious art, and substituting
the waving garments and flowing hair (suggestive of atmosphere and
swiftness of motion) which we see in Perugino and Raphael.

Finally, the picture is of topographical interest for the beautiful
view of Florence and the Val d' Arno in the background--

      The valley beneath where, white and wide
    And washed by the morning water-gold,
      Florence lay out on the mountain-side.

  BROWNING: _Old Pictures in Florence_.

The precise point of view has been identified by Miss Margaret Stokes
in her _Six Months in the Apennines_, pp. 261-264. Turning off the high
road, on the descent from the hill of Fiesole--

      "I got among the lanes on Monte Rinaldi near La Lastra, on the
      Via Bolognese, and soon found myself among the ruined terraces
      of an ancient garden, where cactus and aloe grew side by side
      with brambles, periwinkles, and ivy. Having reached an open in
      the thicket into which I had strayed, I was startled to see
      the very scene represented by Botticelli about the year 1455
      lying at my feet--the wide horizon reaching from San Domenico,
      and the Apennines beyond Monte Moro, Scala, and Monte Maggio,
      round the whole Val d' Arno, to San Lorenzo and the northern
      boundary of Florence. Seated on the same mountain side, where
      the great painter must have sat four hundred and thirty years
      ago, and holding my little copy of his landscape in my hand, it
      was intensely interesting to trace the objects still remaining
      on which his eye had rested, and which his conscientious pencil
      had outlined, and to note the changes wrought by time in the
      aspect of the scene."

Miss Stokes prints side by side with her copy of Botticelli's
background a topographical plan of the present scene. The house on the
hill above the Mugnone beyond the bridge is the Villa Palmieri, where
Queen Victoria stayed in 1888. Boccaccio selected it for one of the
homes of his fair storytellers in the _Decameron_. Matteo Palmieri
bought it in 1450. There, no doubt, Botticelli was often a guest, and
there the two friends may have planned this great altar-piece. "It is
perfectly in keeping with the poetic instincts of sacred painters of
the time that this great vision of Heaven should be represented as
bursting on the poet in his own very home. Gazing upwards from his
cypress groves into the unfathomable blue above, it is as if the sky
had slowly opened, and the interior of a vast dome were revealed,
rising above three iridescent bands of light, peopled with nine
successive zones of sacred forms, all gazing in absorbed ecstasy on the
figure of the Divine Mother, lowliest of women, kneeling at the feet of
the Redeemer" (pp. 261-264).


1127. THE LAST SUPPER.

  _Ercole Roberti de' Grandi_ (Ferrarese: 1450-1496).

      This Ercole is not to be confused with the younger painter
      of the same family (see 1119). Ercole Roberti was the son of
      Antonio Grandi, also a painter. A drawing attributed to him
      in the Louvre, representing the Massacre of the Innocents,
      in which he nearly approaches the grandeur of conception and
      masterly execution of Mantegna, seems to show that he had
      either studied under that great painter, or had experienced his
      influence. Mantua, where Mantegna lived after 1468, is at no
      great distance from Ferrara. Ercole was employed at the latter
      place by the dukes, from whom he received a regular salary.
      Pictures by him are rare, and none is authenticated by his
      genuine signature. In the Dresden Gallery are two compartments
      of a predella by him, another being in the Royal Institution at
      Liverpool. In these and a few other works, including those in
      our Gallery, Ercole reveals himself as a thorough Ferrarese,
      in his energetic rendering of life and character, and in his
      careful study of details (Layard's edition of "Kugler," ii.
      351, and Morelli's _German Galleries_, pp. 109-113).

A very dainty little work. Notice especially the painting of the
bas-reliefs and of the decanters. The attitudes of the disciples
betoken respect or veneration, except that of the nearest figure,
Judas, who turns away his head.


1128. THE CIRCUMCISION OF CHRIST.

  _Luca Signorelli_ (Cortona: 1441-1523).

      Signorelli was born at Cortona, on the boundary of Umbria and
      Tuscany. By early teaching he is an Umbrian, but in style a
      Florentine. Indeed, his position in the history of art is that
      of forerunner of Michael Angelo. He was a pupil of Piero della
      Francesca, with whom, no doubt, he acquired a knowledge of the
      figure from anatomical study of the nude. His chief works,
      the frescoes in the cathedral of Orvieto,[219]--executed by
      the artist after his sixtieth year,--were ten years earlier
      than the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michael Angelo, who
      was largely influenced by Signorelli's example. Like Michael
      Angelo, Signorelli is intensely dramatic, and in pictures which
      do not allow of the violent action to be found in his frescoes,
      his figures seem to be instinct with suppressed action. "To
      no other contemporary painter," says Morelli, "was it given
      to endow the human frame with the like degree of passion,
      vehemence, and strength" (_Roman Galleries_, p. 92). "To this
      we may add," says another critic, "that no other painter has
      ever conceived humanity with the same stately grandeur and
      in the same broad spirit. The confident strength of youth,
      the stern austerity of middle life, the resolute solemnity
      of old age--these are his themes. Signorelli is, before all,
      the painter of the dignity of human life" (Maud Cruttwell,
      _Luca Signorelli_, p. 31.) He is a representative also of the
      literary and classical Renaissance. He is fond of architectural
      adornments in the style of his time--as in the present picture,
      where the ceremony takes place in a hall or porch enriched with
      bas-reliefs in circular panels and paved with square slabs of
      coloured marbles. He painted the usual religious pictures, but
      did not adhere to the traditional modes, and often introduced
      a classical element (see 1133). It is interesting to note
      that in his picture of some nude Greek gods (at Berlin) the
      composition is the same as in his regulation church pictures
      of the Madonna and Saints. Of Signorelli's personal life there
      is a pleasant account in Vasari, whose kinsman he was. He
      was a person of consequence in his native city, going hither
      and thither to paint commissions, and then returning to the
      discharge of his civic duties. "He lived splendidly, in the
      manner," says Vasari, "rather of a noble and a gentleman than
      in that of a painter." Not that he despised his profession,
      for he expressly advised that his little kinsman should "by
      all means learn to draw, that he may not degenerate, for even
      though he should hereafter devote himself to learning, yet
      the knowledge of design, if not profitable, cannot fail to be
      honourable and advantageous." Of Signorelli's own devotion
      to his art Vasari tells another story, which has thus been
      versified--

    Vasari tells that Luca Signorelli,
    The morning star of Michael Angelo,
    Had but one son, a youth of seventeen summers,
    Who died....
    Still Luca spoke and groaned not; but he raised
    The wonderful dead youth, and smoothed his hair,
    Washed his red wounds, and laid him on a bed....
    Naked and beautiful....
    Then Luca seized his palette: hour by hour
    Silence was in the room; none durst approach:
    Morn wore to noon, and noon to eve, when shyly
    A little maid peeped in and saw the painter
    Painting his dead son with unerring hand-stroke,
    Firm and dry-eyed before the lordly canvas.

  SYMONDS, _Renaissance_, iii. 281.

Our picture is thus described by Vasari,--for the fact that he calls
it a fresco is no argument against the identification, since he often
makes such mistakes: "In the church of San Francesco, in Volterra,
this master painted a fresco, representing the Circumcision of Christ.
This also is considered a wonderfully beautiful picture, but the Child
having been injured by the damp, was repaired by Sodoma, whereby the
beauty was much diminished. And, of a truth, it would often be much
better to retain the works of excellent masters, though half-spoiled,
than suffer them to be retouched by less capable artists." Vasari,
however, seems to have been "anxious to place Sodoma in a bad light
whenever he could. Damp was in all probability not the cause of the
restoration of the infant Christ. It was very likely repainted because
the public of Volterra disliked the realism with which Signorelli
seems to have treated the subject" (Richter, p. 48). Signorelli's
children are curiously ugly: it seems as if he had no sympathy except
in the painting of figures of powerful maturity. Of the fact of the
repainting recorded by Vasari there is no doubt; for the position of
the legs has been altered, their original action being distinctly
shown by the incised outline still visible through the deep blue
colour of the Virgin's robe. The painting of the other figures is
"bold and resolute, the draperies sweep in broad folds round them.
The attitude of the standing woman to the right is grand, and the
earnest concentration of the faces on the ceremony, and the absence
of any connecting link between them and us, give dramatic reality to
the scene" (Cruttwell, p. 40). It is interesting to note that the
figure of the operator is like the portrait of himself which Signorelli
introduced into his frescoes of the Preaching of Anti-Christ at
Orvieto: the figure is, moreover, clothed in the dress of the period
and of the rich materials in which, Vasari says, the artist took much
pleasure in dressing himself. Behind the central group is the aged
Simeon, who blessed God and said, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant
depart in peace, according to thy word."


1129. KING PHILIP IV. OF SPAIN.

  _Velazquez_ (Spanish: 1599-1660). _See 197._

The king is younger here than in 745; hanging from his chain is the
order of the Golden Fleece. Notice also that the head is not so
minutely painted here as in 745; that being a bust portrait would be
seen near, this being a full-length would naturally be placed above the
level of the eye. The smaller picture might be called, in the art-slang
of to-day, "a harmony in black and gold"; this, from the shimmer on
its lace and the flashing on the rapier hilt, "a harmony in black and
silver."

"Strange lot," exclaims a biographer of Velazquez, with reference
to the painter's portraits of the king, "to be the Apelles of this
inactive Alexander. For thirty-seven long years always painting the
same effigy! For throughout all these years Philip's features preserved
a marvellous, a startling uniformity. In the black silk court dress,
in the hunting suit, in the military uniform, in the white satin
robe of state, in the gilded steel armour, in the festive religious
attire--kneeling, standing, mounted--the same stereotyped head is
still there with its everlasting steadfast gaze. It may change from
lean to full, from the fresh smooth features of youth and those of
manhood, marked by the lines of passion, to the leaden, swollen, and
rigid lineaments of age; but even at a distance it is still instantly
recognised. Who can mistake the long oval, with its pale whitish
complexion, and cold phlegmatic glance of the great blue eyes under
the high forehead, and light stiffly-curled hair, strong flat lips
and massive chin, the whole overcast with an expression of pride that
repels all advances and suppresses all outward show of feeling? He is
said to have laughed but thrice in his life; and although the statement
might be questioned, it was still good enough to point a sally in one
of Calderon's plays" (Justi's _Velazquez and his Times_, pp. 107, 108).


1130. CHRIST WASHING HIS DISCIPLES' FEET.

  _Tintoretto_ (Venetian: 1518-1584). _See 16._

Some remarks made by Ruskin on another version by Tintoret of the
same subject are not inappropriate to this dark and probably faded
picture.[220] "One circumstance is noticeable as in a considerable
degree detracting from the interest of most of Tintoret's
representations of our Saviour with his disciples. He never loses sight
of the fact that all were poor, and the latter ignorant; and while he
never paints a senator or a saint, once thoroughly canonised, except as
a gentleman, he is very careful to paint the Apostles in their living
intercourse with the Saviour in such a manner that the spectator may
see in an instant, as the Pharisee did of old, that they were unlearned
and ignorant men; and, whenever we find them in a room, it is always
such a one as would be inhabited by the lower classes.... We are
quickly reminded that the guests' chamber or upper room ready prepared
was not likely to have been in a palace, by the humble furniture upon
the floor" (_Stones of Venice_, Venetian Index, under "Moisé, Church
of St.") In front is St. Peter, placing his foot in a brazen basin and
bending forward with a deprecating action--in contrast to which is the
look of cheerful and almost amused alacrity on the part of Him who came
not to be ministered unto, but to minister. Behind are other disciples
pressing forward with reverent curiosity. Another, in the right-hand
corner of the foreground, has raised his foot on a bench and is drying
it with a cloth. To the left a female attendant holds a taper, whilst
in the background are other figures, one of whom reclines before a fire.


1131. JOSEPH AND HIS KINDRED IN EGYPT.

  _Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo_ (Florentine: 1494-1557).

      Jacopo Carucci, commonly called Pontormo, from his birthplace
      of that name (a town on the road from Pisa to Florence), was
      a scholar of Andrea del Sarto, and was employed with his
      master in decorating the outer court of the SS. Annunziata at
      Florence. His fresco there of the "Visitation" is, for the
      grandeur of the figures and beauty of the colouring, worthy
      of Andrea himself. Pontormo was one of the most original
      "characters" among those described by Vasari. His pictures were
      much sought after, but "he would never work but at such moments
      as he pleased, and for such persons as chanced to be agreeable
      to him, insomuch that he was frequently sought by gentlemen
      who desired to possess some work from his hand, but for whom
      he would do nothing; yet at that very time he would probably
      be employing himself zealously for some inferior and plebeian
      person. One of the Medici had been greatly pleased with a
      picture by Pontormo, and said that in reward for it he might
      ask whatever he pleased and should have his wish granted. But
      such was, I know not whether to say the timidity, or the too
      great respect and modesty of this man, that he asked nothing
      better than just so much money as would enable him to redeem
      a cloak which he had hastily pledged." Many other interesting
      tales of Pontormo will be found in Vasari--of his love of
      secrecy, his curious manner of life, and the dead bodies he
      kept in troughs of water, so to paint more realistically the
      victims of the Deluge. This last tale is characteristic of
      Pontormo's place in the history of art, which for the most part
      was that of an exaggerated mannerist after Michael Angelo. In
      the National Gallery we see him at his best. His portraits are
      uniformly excellent, and his "Joseph in Egypt" is mentioned by
      Vasari as his most successful work--"whether as regards the
      power of invention displayed, the grouping of the figures,
      the animation of the heads, or the variety and beauty of the
      attitudes."

This crowded and fantastic composition contains a drama in five acts
describing incidents in the life of Joseph in Egypt (see Genesis xlvii.
1-6, 13-26; xlviii. 1-14). (1) On the left Pharaoh, in a white turban,
and surrounded by attendants, is met by Joseph and his brethren, who
stand before him in attitudes of supplication. The youth sitting on
the steps with a basket in his hand is a portrait (Vasari tells us)
of the painter's pupil, Bronzino. (2) On the right of the foreground
Joseph, seated on a triumphal car drawn by naked children, stoops
forward towards a man who kneels and presents a petition. (3) In the
middle distance there is an animated group of men ("Wherefore shall
we die before thine eyes, both we and our land?"). (4) On the steps
leading up to the circular building on the right, Joseph is leading
one of his sons to see the dying Jacob; he is followed by the "steward
of the house," a conspicuous figure in a long crimson robe. The other
boy appears at the top of the steps and is embraced by his mother.
(5) Inside the room Jacob is represented as giving his blessing to
the two boys, Ephraim and Manasseh, who are presented to him by their
father. The antique statues which adorn the building were often given
by mediæval artists as characteristic of Egypt, from which the art of
Greece was believed to have been derived (see Richter's _Italian Art in
the National Gallery_, pp. 36-40).

The removal of this picture has been blasted by a woman's curse. It
was painted for a Florentine noble, named Borgherini; and when he was
exiled, the civic authorities sent to his house to buy up all its works
of art, which were to be sent as a present to the King of France. But
Borgherini's wife received the official with "reproaches of intolerable
bitterness," says Vasari, "such as had never before been hurled at
living man: 'How then! Dost thou, vile broker of frippery, miserable
huckster of twopences, dost thou presume to come hither with intent
to lay thy fingers on the ornaments which belong to the chambers of
gentlemen? despoiling, as thou hast long done, and as thou art for ever
doing, this our city of her fairest ornaments to embellish strange
lands therewith? Depart from this house, thou and thy myrmidons.'" The
lady's anger preserved the picture--only to be afterwards seduced away,
by English gold, into the Duke of Hamilton's Collection, from which it
was bought for the National Gallery in 1882. Borgherini's commission
for the works in question is thus described by Vasari:--

      "It chanced that Pier Francesco Borgherini had at that time
      caused rich carvings in wood to be executed by Baccio d'
      Agnolo for the decoration of coffers, backs of chairs, seats
      of different forms, with a bedstead in walnut wood, all of
      great beauty, and intended for the furnishing forth of an
      apartment. He therefore desired that the paintings thereof
      should be equal to the rest of the ornaments. To that end he
      commissioned Andrea del Sarto to paint the history of Joseph in
      figures of no great size, and these our artist was to execute
      in competition with other artists,"--Ubertino and Pontormo
      among the number (_Vasari_, iii. 201, iv. 353).

Ubertino's paintings for this sumptuous bedroom as well as that of
Pontormo have now found their way into our Gallery (see 1218, 1219).


1132. THE VESTIBULE OF A LIBRARY.

  _Hendrick Steenwyck, the younger_ (Flemish: 1580-1649).

      The elder painter of this name was one of the first to give us
      those architectural interiors, which later became a specialty
      among various painters (see Havard's _Dutch School_, p. 53).
      His son, the younger Steenwyck, adopted the same line of
      art. He came to London before 1629, and was much employed in
      supplying architectural backgrounds to the royal portraits by
      Van Dyck and to other pictures. He died in London after 1649.

A picture for architects to look at. It is the interior of a vestibule
giving access to a library, and is full of inventiveness. Notice, too,
how beautifully the accessories--the tablecloth, the vase of flowers,
etc., are painted.


1133. THE NATIVITY.

  _Luca Signorelli_ (Cortona: 1441-1523). _See 1128._

A dramatic representation in one canvas of the Gospel story told in
Luke ii. 1-17. _Scene 1._ "And it came to pass in those days, that
there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world
should be enrolled." This is represented by the Roman portico behind
the central group, under which, at a long table, is seated a row of
scribes, who are entering the names of the people. _Scene 2._ "And
Joseph went up ... to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife ... and she
brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes,
and laid him in the manger." This is the subject of the central scene.
But the artist, no longer bound by conventional rules, treats his text
freely. There is no manger, but the stable is suggested by the heads
of the ox and the ass at the side; and instead of the Babe being found
"wrapped in swaddling clothes," it is naked. Joseph, in orange and
crimson robes, is full of benevolence. The shepherds on the left are
in deep reverence. The Virgin is robed in deep blue and green, typical
of the depth and mystery of her divine love. In the interstices of
the central group are three angels with golden hair and rainbow-hued
wings--"calm shining sons of morn." _Scene 3._ On the left is a group
of shepherds: "And there were in the same country shepherds abiding
in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night." The angel of
the Lord is appearing unto them from heaven, and they are sore afraid,
shielding their eyes from the heavenly light. _Scene 4._ On the right
of the spectator, and seen through an arch of natural rock, is a
shepherd playing on the pipe. This figure suggests the antique; he is
crowned with ivy leaves and might almost be Orpheus. Thus, instead
of representing the "Glory to God in the highest" being sung by "a
multitude of the heavenly host," Signorelli gives us a Greek singer--a
variation thoroughly characteristic of the classical revival of his
time.

The landscape is also thoroughly characteristic of the mediæval mind,
which loved the fields but dreaded the mountains. See here, for
instance, how lovingly the flowers in the foreground are painted, and
note the trailing ivy in the centre of the picture, as well as the
flowers and ferns; whereas the rocks upon which these latter grow are
altogether impossible in form and position (see _Modern Painters_, vol.
iii. pt. iv. chs. xiv. and xv., where the landscape of Dante, of whom
Signorelli was a close student, is analysed). The artist's signature is
inscribed on the frieze of the portico. Some, however, have questioned
its authenticity and declare the picture to be a weak imitation of the
master.


1134. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Liberale da Verona_ (Veronese: 1451-1535).

      Liberale di Giacomo, of Verona, was brought up as a
      miniaturist, and his works in that sort, executed before he
      was out of his teens, are much admired for their fancy and
      sumptuous colour. The choral books which he executed for Monte
      Oliveto are now in the cathedral of Chiusi. Returning to
      Verona, Liberale took to painting on a large scale, and became
      one of the most esteemed artists of the Veronese School. "One
      of his best works is the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian in the
      Brera, in which he has introduced an interesting architectural
      background with Venetian palaces on a canal, designed with much
      spirit and minuteness. In consequence of his bold and vigorous
      style his works are occasionally attributed to Mantegna"
      (Kugler). Many of his pictures are still at Verona.

One of "the small spiritless Madonna pictures which he produced
carelessly and hastily in his old age, and supplied for niggardly
pay to the citizens of Verona. They served as wedding presents, and
Liberale has only himself to thank if this degenerate practice should
have spoilt his reputation" (Dr. Richter in the _Art Journal_, Feb.
1895).


1135, 1136. THE CLEMENCY OF TRAJAN.

  _Unknown_ (Veronese School: 15th century).

These two panels, which clearly formed two sides of an ornamental box,
represent a favourite subject with Italian painters of the period. The
story is that an ancient widow of Rome stopped the Emperor Trajan as he
was about to proceed on one of his foreign expeditions, and asked for
justice against the murderers of her son, who is here seen lying dead
on the roadway. Trajan suggested that she should wait till his return.
She replied that the emperor might be killed in battle. "Then," said
Trajan, "my successor will attend to the business." "But why," she
urged, "not decide the case at once?" The emperor on second thoughts
did so, and the second panel shows him on the judgment seat. He called
the culprits before him, spared their lives, but made them pay heavy
damages to the widow. This incident was engraved, together with the
record of his victories, on Trajan's column.


1137. PORTRAIT OF A BOY.

  _Jacob van Oost the Elder_ (Flemish: 1600-1671).

      This painter was born at Bruges, and his pictures are very
      numerous in his native town. He painted principally religious
      subjects in the style of the Carracci, whose works he had
      studied in Italy. Of his portraits, this work--signed with his
      monogram,[221] and dated 1650--is the best.

A boy of eleven--so the inscription on the right-hand corner
states--Mr. Pater's Sebastian van Storck, it might be.

"It was a winter scene, by Adrian van de Velde, or by Isaac van
Ostade.... Sebastian van Storck, confessedly the most graceful
performer in all the skating multitude moving in endless maze over
the vast surface of the frozen water-meadow, liked best this season
of the year for its expression of a perfect impassivity, or at least
of a perfect repose. The earth was, or seemed to be, at rest, with
a breathlessness of slumber which suited the young man's peculiar
temper.... Yet with all his appreciation of the national winter,
Sebastian was not altogether a Hollander. His mother, of Spanish
descent and Catholic, had given a richness of tone and form to the
healthy freshness of the Dutch physiognomy, apt to preserve its
youthfulness of aspect far beyond the period of life usual with other
peoples. This mixed expression charmed the eyes of Isaac van Ostade,
who had painted his portrait at one of those skating parties, with his
plume and squirrel's tail and fur muff, in all the modest pleasantness
of boyhood" (_Imaginary Portraits_, p. 92).


1138. THE CRUCIFIXION.

  _Andrea del Castagno_ (Florentine: 1390-1457).

      There is a rough vigour in this picture which agrees well
      with what we know of the painter. His father was a labouring
      man. Left an orphan in his boyhood, Andrea herded the cattle
      of an uncle at the hamlet of Castagno (whence the painter's
      name). He was first stimulated to study art by chancing to come
      across an itinerant painter at work on a rustic tabernacle. He
      began to draw upon the walls with charcoal or his knife, and
      showed therein so much ability that he attracted the notice
      of Benedetto de' Medici, who took the youth to Florence and
      placed him under proper tuition. Such is Vasari's story. But
      Benedetto's patronage did not save Andrea from a hard struggle
      with adversity. At the age of forty he is found declaring that
      he had neither bed, board, nor lodging in Florence, and was
      so poor that in illness he had to take shelter in a public
      hospital. These declarations were made, however, in a taxing
      return. Subsequently Andrea received various commissions in the
      palaces and churches of Florence, and from the Government. For
      the latter he painted on the wall of the palace of the Podestà
      the gibbeted bodies of those who were declared rebels on the
      recall from banishment of Cosimo de' Medici. Most of Andrea's
      works have perished; the few that remain in Florence display
      "a rude and coarse energy and an independent and original
      spirit, but are seldom attractive, either in form or colour"
      (Kugler). He is said to have painted in oil, but no work by him
      in that medium exists. Vasari's story in this connection, that
      he assassinated Domenico Veneziano, is demonstrably false (see
      under 766).

This picture is impressive in its solemn gloom. The impenitent thief
writhes in agony, the suffering Christ casts his last glance at his
mother, who, with St. John the beloved disciple, stands below in
speechless grief. "The most beautiful in colour of all early works"
(Ford Madox Brown in _Magazine of Art_, 1890, p. 134). Andrea's
treatment of the subject, as also Antonello's (1166), is remarkable
for simplicity and realism. In most representations of the Crucifixion
the central tragedy is partially lost in the large groups of
bystanders (_e.g._ 718, 1048, 1088), and various symbolical figures
are introduced--as, for instance, flying angels around the cross. Even
in Giotto's fresco at Padua this feature is introduced. Indeed "in all
the pictures of the Crucifixion by the great masters, with the single
exception perhaps of that by Tintoret in the church of San Cassiano
at Venice, there is a tendency to treat the painting as a symmetrical
image, or collective symbol of sacred mysteries, rather than as a
dramatic representation" (Ruskin's _Giotto_, p. 149). For an example of
a symbolic representation, in contrast to the severe simplicity of the
picture before us, see No. 1478.


1139. THE ANNUNCIATION.

  _Duccio_ (Sienese: about 1260-1340). _See 566._

This picture shows us the side of Duccio on which the early School of
Siena still adhered to the traditions of Byzantine art. For instance,
the Greek method of symbolising light on drapery is seen in the gold
lines of Mary's dress, a decorative method which Duccio was the last to
use. So, too, in the gold background, which was universal in Byzantine
mosaics. This survival may be seen in all the early Sienese pictures
in the Gallery. In 1188, for instance, all the landscape background is
gold; so in 1140 are all the spaces between the houses; whilst 1113
resembles a brilliant mosaic with gold for its groundwork.

We have here the earliest representation in our Gallery of one of
the most frequent subjects in mediæval art, and a few remarks on its
development may be interesting. The subjects which artists had at their
disposal in those days were prescribed to them by religious uses and
religious conventions. Not in novelty of subject, but in individuality
of treatment, was scope for the artist's ingenuity to be found. Hence
a comparison of pictures of the same subject by different artists and
different schools affords a suggestive study in the evolution of art.
One may trace by such comparisons something of the same process of
"descent with modification" that Darwin has exhibited in the case of
fish and insect, fern and flower.[222] Thus we may compare the present
picture--the earliest and simplest "Annunciation" in our Gallery--with
Crivelli's (739), which is the most ornate, and which was painted
200 years later. Two pictures of the same subject could hardly be
more unlike. Duccio's is severe and simple; Crivelli's, florid and
picturesque. The one is rigidly confined to the main matter in hand;
the other is crowded from corner to corner with dainty detail and
lively incident. Halfway, as it were, between the two stands Lippi's
"Annunciation" (666); there also there is much lovely detail, but we
see in a moment that "in the Florentine, the detail is there for the
sake of the picture; in the Venetian, the picture is there for the
sake of the detail." Crivelli's picture shows us the furthest point
of departure from the original type. Yet observe how much of the
original survives. First, and this point is absolutely fixed in all
mediæval representations of the subject, the angel Gabriel occupies
the left-hand side, and the Blessed Virgin the right-hand side of the
picture. Often (as in Giotto's frescoes in the Arena at Padua) the
subject is divided into two halves by the intervention of the choir
arch. In Italy, the Annunciation was always the subject employed for
the decoration of the main entrance of church. For this purpose, the
convenient architectural arrangement was to place a relief of the angel
on one side, a relief of the Madonna on the other, and the doorway
between them.[223] Similarly inside, the Annunciation was constantly
employed to decorate the blank space beside an archway, and hence
arose the custom of dividing the treatment. We may see examples in our
Gallery in the wings (interior side) of the "Coronation" by Justus
of Padua (701), and in the terminal panels of Landini's altar-piece
(580A). To this peculiarity is perhaps due the wall, barrier, or column
which so often marks off the figure of the Virgin from that of the
angel. We find it here in the Duccio; also in Fra Angelico's picture
(1406), and again in Crivelli's. Sometimes, however, there is no
such division. See, for instance, Lippi's picture (666), and Manni's
(1104). There is a reason for this difference. Lippi's, no doubt, was
painted to fill the space over a doorway; Manni's was the apex of an
altar-piece. The decorative function of the pictures governed their
composition. Returning to the Duccio, we may notice as a third and
nearly constant element, the angel's lilies--Annunciation lilies, as
the Italians call them. Sometimes they are in a vase as here; sometimes
(as in the Crivelli), the angel bears a lily in his hand. Next, it
is noticeable that the action almost invariably takes place in a
loggia--an arcade or cloister. The lectern or _prie-dieu_, which in
Crivelli's picture and in very many others of the subject stands beside
the Madonna, is a refinement on the earliest type as seen in Duccio and
Fra Angelico. But whether with lectern or without, the Virgin is always
represented with a book engaged in her devotions. Visitors who desire
to trace the evolution of this subject should conclude their studies at
the Tate Gallery, where, in Rossetti's "Ecce Ancilla Domini" and Mr.
Hacker's "Annunciation," modern versions of the old subject are given.
Rossetti's is one of the most imaginative in the whole range of art
(see Ruskin's analysis cited in vol. ii. of this handbook, No. 1210).


1140. CHRIST HEALING THE BLIND.

  _Duccio_ (Sienese: about 1260-1340). _See 566._

The departure from conventional forms, which was characteristic of
Duccio, is conspicuous in this picture. Each of the disciples has an
individual character, the entire group representing not conventional
forms but living types of men. There is a piece of symbolism in the
blind man who has already been healed which should not escape notice.
Duccio is not content to represent the bare act of healing, but insists
further upon the efficacy of the touch of Him who was the Light of
the World, by making the blind man drop the staff of which he has no
longer need. There is another piece of symbolism in the gradated
scale by which he draws attention to the respective dignities of his
characters--Christ being the tallest in the picture, the blind man the
shortest (A. H. Macmurdo in _Century Guild Hobby Horse_, 1886, p. 119).


1141. SUPPOSED PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST.

  _Antonello da Messina_ (Venetian: 1444-1493). _See 673._

A portrait in Antonello's second or Venetian manner. The portrait is
the more interesting from the probability that it is of the painter
himself. The inscription which so stated is said to have been sawn off
by a former owner to fit the picture into a frame.[224] "It is the
likeness of a man who is entirely self-possessed, nowise an idealist,
yet one who would never be prompted to impetuous action. He has plenty
of intelligence; nothing would escape those clear gray eyes;--scarcely,
however, do they seem as if they would penetrate below the outward show
of things. Considered from a technical point of view, the same subdued
feeling is apparent. In the Louvre masterpiece (which this picture at
once recalls), Antonello evidently braced himself for a supreme effort;
in the National Gallery portrait we have an excellent example of his
powers at his best period" (_Times_, May 31, 1883).


1143. THE PROCESSION TO CALVARY.

  _Ridolfo Ghirlandajo_ (Florentine: 1483-1561).

      Ridolfo Bigordi, called Ghirlandajo, was the son of Domenico
      Ghirlandajo (see 1230), who gave him his first instruction in
      art. On the death of Domenico, Ridolfo was taken charge of by
      his uncle David, and perhaps received instruction also from
      Domenico's favourite pupil, Granacci. In 1503 Leonardo da
      Vinci came to Florence, and seems to have exercised a strong
      influence on the young Ridolfo. To this Leonardine period of
      our artist, the present picture, executed in 1505, belongs:
      some of the heads (which are of great force and beauty) seem to
      have been copied or imitated from Leonardo. To the same period
      and influence Morelli ascribes the "Annunciation," No. 1288
      in the Uffizi, there attributed to Leonardo himself, and the
      "Portrait of a Goldsmith," similarly attributed in the Pitti.
      In Ridolfo's works after 1506 the influence of Raphael is
      discernible. Raphael was his fellow-student and contemporary,
      and between the two congenial youths an ardent friendship,
      Vasari tells us, sprang up. Raphael employed Ridolfo to fill
      in part of the blue drapery of the "Belle Jardinière", and
      invited him to Rome; but Ridolfo, "who had never, as the saying
      is, 'lost sight of the cupola' (of the Duomo), and could in
      no wise resolve on living out of Florence, would accept no
      proposal which might compel him to abandon his abode in his
      native place." At Florence Ridolfo found ample and congenial
      employment, not only in the production of pictures, but in
      artistic catering for the pageants of the Republic, and in
      the service of the Medici. He did not disdain, says Vasari,
      "to paint banners, standards, and matters of similar kind. He
      was an exceedingly prompt and rapid painter in many kinds of
      work, more particularly in the preparations for festivals; when
      the Emperor Charles V. arrived in Florence, he constructed
      a triumphal arch in ten days, and another arch at the gate
      of Prato was erected by this artist in a very short space of
      time, this work being constructed for the marriage of the most
      Illustrious Lady the Duchess Leonora." Among his pictures,
      the "St. Zenobio restoring a boy to life" and the burial
      of the same saint, in the Uffizi, are considered Ridolfo's
      masterpieces; they are remarkable for force of colour, and fine
      modelling in the heads. Ridolfo employed a number of young
      painters, and from this workshop issued many pictures which
      were sold to England, Germany, and Spain. He lived to be nearly
      eighty years old; and "though heavily afflicted with the gout,
      he still bore much love," says Vasari, "to all connected with
      art, and liked to hear of, and when he could to see, whatever
      was most commended in the way of buildings, pictures, and other
      works." He was buried with his forefathers in S. Maria Novella.

One of the pictures in the Gallery which are additionally interesting
from being mentioned and praised by Vasari--who, by the way, was
himself a friend of Ridolfo:

      "In the Church of S. Gallo he depicted our Saviour Christ,
      bearing his Cross and accompanied by a large body of soldiers;
      the Madonna and the other Maries, weeping in bitter grief, are
      also represented, with San Giovanni and Santa Veronica, who
      presents the handkerchief to our Saviour; all these figures are
      delineated with infinite force and animation.[225] This work,
      in which there are many beautiful portraits from the life, and
      which is executed with much love and care, caused Ridolfo to
      acquire a great name; the portrait of his father is among the
      heads, as are those of certain among his disciples, and of some
      of his friends--Poggino, Scheggia, and Nunziata, for example,
      the head of the latter being one of extraordinary beauty" (v.
      5).

It is interesting in this connection to notice that the procession
to Calvary was one of the regulation subjects with mediæval painters
(see for a picture of it, some two hundred years earlier, 1189), and
familiarity bred contempt for the pathos of the scene; it became a
mere opportunity for variegated compositions, and curiously enough two
of the brightest pictures in the Gallery (this and 806) are of this
subject. For the story of St. Veronica see 687.


1144. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Bazzi_, called _Il Sodoma_ (Lombard: 1477-1549).

      The confusion in the use of the word "school" is illustrated
      in the case of Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (sometimes wrongly given
      as Razzi), called also Il Sodoma. He spent most of his life
      at Siena, and is often grouped therefore with the Sienese
      School. But he was born at Vercelli, in Piedmont--being the
      son of a shoemaker--and "ripened into an artist during the two
      years he spent at Milan with Leonardo da Vinci" (1498-1500).
      Sodoma is therefore, says Morelli (_German Galleries_, p.
      428), to be reckoned as one of the Milanese-Lombard School.
      "Nay, I believe I should not be far wrong were I to maintain
      that the majority of the better works ascribed to Leonardo in
      private collections are by him.... Young Bazzi while at Milan
      seems to have taken Leonardo for his model, not only in art,
      but even in personal appearance and fancies. All his life he
      loved to play the cavalier, and, like Leonardo, always kept
      saddle-horses in his stable, and all kinds of queer animals
      in his house."[226] Vasari gives an amusing, though probably
      apocryphal, account of his excesses, and represents him as a
      lewd fellow of the baser sort, with whom no respectable person
      would have anything to do. But Raphael so respected Bazzi and
      his work that he introduced his portrait (erroneously called
      Perugino's) by the side of his own in his celebrated fresco of
      the "School of Athens." But at any rate Sodoma was a careless,
      jovial fellow--dividing his time between the studio and the
      stable; and when cash ran short or a horse ran wrong, he would
      meet his liabilities with a hastily dashed-off picture. This
      very Madonna may perhaps have paid off a racing debt.

      "Sodoma," says a distinguished German critic, "had a poetic
      soul, full of glowing and deep feeling, a richly endowed
      creative mind, but no inclination for severe earnest work"
      (Jansen). His execution is unequal, but at his best he is one
      of the most attractive of all the Italian painters. No one
      will deny this who recalls the fresco, in the upper floor
      of the Farnesina Palace, of "The Marriage of Alexander and
      Roxana"--"one of the most enchanting pictures of the whole
      Renaissance," or who has studied the painter's work in the
      churches, the Gallery, and the Palazzo Publico of Siena. The
      figure of "St. Ansano" in the latter place may be taken as an
      example of the dignity which Sodoma was capable of imparting
      to his types. The "Christ bound to the Column" in the Siena
      gallery is a fine example of his power as a colourist and his
      command of pathetic expression; while in the figure of Eve in
      the "Limbo" in the same gallery, and in more than one Holy
      Family, we may see his innate sense of feminine beauty and
      grace. It is supposed that Sodoma went as a young man to Milan
      and there imbibed the influence of Leonardo da Vinci, but this
      theory (maintained by Morelli) of a close connection between
      Leonardo and Sodoma is not accepted by all critics. In 1501 he
      went to Siena, where, in the stagnation of the local school, he
      found ample openings for his abilities. To this period belong
      the series of frescoes representing the history of St. Benedict
      in the Convent of Monte Oliveto. In 1507 Sodoma was taken by
      the Sienese merchant, Agostino Chigi, to Rome. He began to
      decorate the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican, but the
      Pope transferred the commission to Raphael. Sodoma was again in
      Rome in 1514, when he painted for Chigi the frescoes already
      referred to. In the interval he had returned to Siena, where he
      married the daughter of an innkeeper. From 1515 onwards he made
      Siena his headquarters. Copies of some of the works mentioned
      above may be seen in the Arundel Society's Collection.

This picture, which is hardly a satisfactory example of the painter,
is one of those supposed by some critics to have been painted in the
years 1518-20, during which he is believed to have revisited Milan.
Others place it later in the artist's career. "Probably one of his late
'pot-boilers.' It was originally in the Rossini Collection at Pisa,
and may have been painted there during the last years of the artist's
life, while he was working at the choir decorations in the cathedral"
(_Sodoma_, by the Contessa Priuli Bon, 1900, p. 92).


1145. SAMSON AND DELILAH.

  _Andrea Mantegna_ (Paduan: 1431-1506). _See 274._

Samson, whose giant's strength lay in his hair, fell into the toils
of Delilah (Judges xvi.), who delivered him to his enemies by cutting
off his hair as he lay asleep. On the trunk of the olive tree behind,
Mantegna has carved the moral he drew from the tale: "Foemina diabolo
tribus assibus est mala peior" (woman is a worse evil than the devil
by the three pennies which bind you to her).[227] But though Mantegna
has taken his subject from the Bible, his treatment of it is in the
classical spirit. "Apart from the fact that her attention is directed
to the mechanical operation, Delilah's expression is one of absolute
and entire unconcern. Look of cunning, or of deceit, or of triumph
there is none. Mantegna was not the man to shirk expression when he
deemed the subject required it; probably, therefore, he left the
features impassive in obedience to the formula of a certain school of
antique sculpture, that all violent emotion should be avoided" (see
_Times_, June 18, 1883).


1147. HEADS OF NUNS.

  _Ambrogio Lorenzetti_ (Sienese: died about 1348).

      Ambrogio, the younger brother of Pietro Lorenzetti (see 1113),
      was the greatest of the early Sienese painters. His series
      of frescoes in the Sala della Pace in the Palazzo Publico of
      Siena, typifying good and bad government, are known to every
      traveller. They are full both of artistic beauty and historical
      interest (see the description by Symonds in his _Sketches and
      Studies_, iii. 43). The heads of many of Ambrogio's allegorical
      figures are of great beauty and grandeur--especially that of
      Peace, which is of classical dignity and may possibly have been
      modelled on the lines of some antique sculpture.

The work before us is a mere shattered fragment of fresco (from a
church in Siena), but it is enough to show the artist's feeling for the
true portraiture that identifies character with likeness. The nuns'
faces are typical of the strong yet tender qualities developed in a
life of seclusion and self-sacrifice.


1148. CHRIST AT THE COLUMN.

  _Velazquez_ (Spanish; 1599-1660). _See 197._

An intensely dramatic rendering of the central lesson of Christianity.
The scene depicted is an episode from the Passion between the scourging
and the crowning with thorns--a scene not given in the Gospels, and
invented to produce a more vivid effect than representations of
familiar scenes. The absence of all decorative accessories concentrates
the attention at once on the figure of the Divine sufferer--bound by
the wrists to the column. His hands are swollen and blackened by the
cords; the blood has trickled down the shoulder--so terrible was the
punishment--and the scourges and rod have been flung contemptuously
at his feet. Yet abnegation of self and Divine compassion are stamped
indelibly on his countenance, as he turns his head to the child who
is kneeling in adoration. The guardian angel behind bids the child
approach the Redeemer in prayer (hence the alternative title that has
been given to the picture, "The Institution of Prayer"). From the
wise and prudent the lessons of Christianity are often hidden, but
Christ himself here reveals them unto babes. "He was wounded for our
transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement
of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." A
thin white line, a ray, reaches from the position of the heart to the
Saviour's ear--

    To see sad sights moves more than hear them told,
    For then the _heart_ interprets to the _ear_
    The heavy motion that it doth behold.

The angel is a portrait (a preparatory study from a model is included
amongst the collection of drawings made by Cean Bermudez). The
downcast eye, the slightly pouting lips, as if about to weep, betray
the harrowing expression of the moment. This expression shows fine
invention, for it might have been more natural for the eye to follow
the hand directing the child's attention to the figure. But the angel
fears himself to look, lest he be overcome with grief. The tone of
the picture is in keeping with its theme. There probably exists no
other painting executed in such a decidedly gray, blackish-gray tone,
although it is by no means colourless, as seen in the orange-brown and
dull crimson of the angel's costume, which are peculiar to Velazquez.
It is as if, after the terrible event that has here taken place,
mourning Nature had strewn the scene with a fine shower of ashes, as
after some tremendous volcanic outburst (Justi's _Velazquez and his
Times_, pp. 241-248).


1149. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Marco d'Oggionno_ (Lombard: about 1470-1530).

      Marco, called Oggionno from the village near Milan in which he
      was born, was one of the pupils and imitators of Leonardo. He
      made several copies of the master's "Last Supper," one of which
      is in the collection of the Royal Academy. His best original
      work on a large scale is the "Triumph of the Three Archangels
      over Satan," in the Brera. Among his smaller works, the
      "Infant Christ caressing St. John," at Hampton Court, is more
      successful than most. His works, says M. Müntz, "are wanting
      in vivacity of feeling and purity of drawing, and intensity of
      colour does duty for intensity of sentiment."

This is a characteristic example of the painter's work. He succeeded
in catching a little of Leonardo's smile, "chilled as it were on the
way" (Logan). The study in chalk for the Virgin's head is in the Dyce
Collection in the South Kensington Museum.


1150. PORTRAIT OF A MAN.

  _Ascribed to Pontormo_ (Florentine: 1494-1557). _See 1131._

1151. THE ENTOMBMENT.

  _Unknown_ (German: 15th Century).

A copy, in colour, of an engraving by Martin Schongauer (see 658).


1152. ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST.

  _Martino Piazza_ (Lombard: early 16th Century).

      Martino and his brother Albertino were painters at Lodi,
      where they worked both together and separately; there are
      many altar-pieces in the churches of that place by them.
      This picture is a signed work of Martino alone. The brothers
      belonged to the school which was established in Milan and its
      neighbourhood before the arrival of Leonardo; but in many of
      Martino's work the new influence is discernible. "The curly
      hair, his high finish and chiaroscuro, derived from a study of
      Leonardo, are distinctive traits" (Catalogue of the Burlington
      Fine Arts Club's Exhibition, 1898, p. lxxvi.).

Compare the type of countenance and form of the rocks with those in
Leonardo's picture, 1093. For the subject of this picture see under 25.


1154. GIRL WITH A LAMB.

  _Greuze_ (French: 1725-1805). _See 206._

An unfinished study--characteristic of the touch of affectation often
visible in Greuze's pictures of simplicity. Children fondling pet lambs
are a favourite motive in art, but its treatment is seldom free from
affectation. See, for instance, Murillo's St. John, 176.


1155. THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN.

  _Matteo di Giovanni_ (Sienese: 1435-1495).

      Matteo, the son of Giovanni di Bartolo (a mercer),--called also
      Matteo di Siena--was the best Sienese painter of his time, and
      in this picture, which is perhaps his masterpiece, we have an
      epitome of all the most characteristic qualities of the earlier
      Sienese school--"its warm, delicate, and transparent colouring,
      its graceful outline, its religious sentiment, and its somewhat
      miniature-like execution. Matteo was the last of the series
      of painters who developed the art of Duccio, adhering to the
      traditions of the school of which that great master was the
      founder" (Layard). In the expression of passion and dramatic
      action that school was never successful, struggling to
      disguise weakness by overstraining expression. This weakness
      is conspicuous in Matteo's pictures of the "Massacre of the
      Innocents" (in S. Agostino and S. Maria de' Servi in Siena),
      and is not absent from his "Ecce Homo" and "St. Stephen" in
      this Gallery (247 and 1461). His best pictures at Siena are
      the "Madonna della Neve" in the chapel of that name, and the
      "Coronation of S. Barbara" in S. Domenico. He also designed one
      of the Sibyls (the Samian) on the marble pavement of the Duomo.

A picture in which the artist concentrates all he could command of
gaiety and joyousness in colour, expression, action, and sentiment; and
thus typical of the personal feeling, approximating to that of a lover
to his mistress, which entered into Madonna worship. These pictures
of coronations and assumptions of the Virgin are not merely tributes
of devotion to the mother of God, but are poetic renderings of the
recognition of women's queenship, of her rule not by force of law but
by tenderness and sacrifice--

        For lo! thy law is pass'd
    That this my love should manifestly be
        To serve and honour thee:
    And so I do: and my delight is full,
    Accepted for the servant of thy rule.

One may read the same spirit, perhaps, in the legend of St. Thomas
and the Madonna, introduced in this picture--of St. Thomas, who ever
doubted, but whose faith was confirmed by a woman's girdle. For the
story is that the Virgin, taking pity on his unbelief, threw down to
him her girdle, which he is here raising his hands to catch, as it
falls from her throne, in order that this tangible proof remaining with
him might remove all doubts for ever from his mind--

        Lady, since I conceived
    Thy pleasurable aspect in my heart,
        My life has been apart
    In shining brightness and the place of truth;
        Which till that time, good sooth,
    Groped among shadows in a darken'd place.

  D. G. ROSSETTI: _Early Italian Poets_.


1157. THE NATIVITY.

  _Bernardo Cavallino_ (Neapolitan: 1622-1654).

      This painter was a pupil of Massimo Stanzioni (a rival of
      Spagnoletto), and showed such ability that "at first he created
      a jealous feeling in Massimo himself. Finding afterwards that
      his talent lay more in small figures than in large, he pursued
      that department and became very celebrated in his school. In
      the galleries of the Neapolitan nobility are to be seen by him,
      on canvas and copper, subjects both sacred and profane. Life
      was alone wanting to him, which he unfortunately shortened by
      his irregularities" (Lanzi, ii. 41).

A characteristic work in the "naturalistic" manner.


1159. THE CALLING OF ABRAHAM.

  _Gaspard Poussin_ (French: 1613-1675). _See 31._

A very impressive picture in spite of the somewhat grotesque angel who
accosts Abraham and points him to the Almighty seated in the clouds
above (Genesis xii.). And indeed it is in his skies that Gaspard
points us to the Infinite--in the open sky, stretching far away into
that yellow horizon. To what does this strange distant space owe its
attractive power?

      "There is one thing that it has, or suggests, which no
      other object of sight suggests in equal degree, and that
      is--Infinity.... For the sky of night, though we may know it
      boundless, is dark; it is a studded vault, a roof that seems to
      shut us in and down; but the bright distance has no limit--we
      feel its infinity, as we rejoice in its purity of light....
      Of the value of this mode of treatment (_i.e._ the rendering
      of open sky) there is a farther and more convincing proof
      than its adoption either by the innocence of the Florentine
      or the ardour of the Venetian, namely, that when retained or
      imitated from them by the landscape painters of the seventeenth
      century, when appearing in isolation from all other good, among
      the weaknesses and paltrinesses of Claude, the mannerisms of
      Gaspar, and the caricatures and brutalities of Salvator, it
      yet redeems and upholds all three, conquers all foulness by
      its purity, vindicates all folly by its dignity, and puts an
      uncomprehended power of permanent address to the human heart
      upon the lips of the senseless and the profane"[228] (_Modern
      Painters_, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. v. §§ 5, 12).


1160. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

  _School of Giorgione_ (Venetian: early 16th century). _See 269._
  _See also_ (p. xx)

This picture--ascribed by Morelli and others to Catena (see 234)--is by
some connected with the name of Giorgione. It displays, says Sir Edward
Poynter, "the qualities which we should expect to find in a picture by
Giorgione, and does not seem so far removed from the only absolutely
authenticated work by him--the altar-piece at Castelfranco--as to make
it impossible to attribute it to his hand. In qualities of drawing and
composition it is superior to what we know of the work of Catena" (_The
National Gallery_, i. 23). "The figures are Bellinesque, yet with that
added touch of delicacy and refinement which Giorgione always knows how
to impart. The richness of colouring, the depth of tone, the glamour of
the whole, is far superior to anything we can point to with certainty
as Catena's work; and no finer example of his 'Giorgionesque' phase
is to be found than the sumptuous 'Warrior adoring the Infant Christ'
(234) which hangs close by. Catena's work seems cold and studied beside
the warmth and spontaneity of Giorgione's little panel" (Herbert Cook's
_Giorgione_, p. 54). "Whoever painted it, it is worth many much larger
canvases. The simple, flowing cast of the drapery, the general scheme
of colour, and the quality of individual tints, such as the mellow
yellow shaded with red, and the greenish-blue of the Virgin's mantle,
are not like what I know of Catena. The lively, well-drawn child, with
its supple limbs; the faces of the women, with full faces, short noses,
and square jaws; the straight-necked horses, and many other things in
this charming picture,--seem to me to proclaim a distinct, if unknown,
master. Above all things distinct, perhaps, is the particular tone of
reverence--naïve, quiet, but deep--that pervades the picture, a feeling
which can scarcely have been imitated, but must have proceeded from the
very character of the painter himself" (Monkhouse, _In the National
Gallery_, p. 224).


1165. ST. HIPPOLYTUS AND ST. CATHERINE.

  _Il Moretto_ (Brescian: 1498-1555). _See 299._

Two saints who were not divided in the manner of their martyrdom,
and who are united therefore on the painter's canvas. Each holds the
martyr's palm. St. Catherine places her left hand on the hilt of a
sword--the instrument by which she was ultimately beheaded, whilst her
foot rests upon the wheel on which she was to have been torn to death,
had not an angel from heaven broken it. St. Hippolytus's death was not
unlike that which had been devised for St. Catherine. He is clad in
armour, for he was the soldier stationed as guard over St. Lawrence
(see 747), but he is represented as bareheaded, and with his face
upturned in reverence, for that "he was so moved by that illustrious
martyr's invincible courage and affectionate exhortations that he
became a Christian with all his family." Wherefore he was tied to the
tails of wild horses and torn to death. On the fragment of stone in
the foreground is an inscription in Latin, telling by what death the
two saints glorified God--"Membris dissolvi voluerunt ne vinculis
divellerentur aeternis:" they chose to be torn limb by limb rather
than by renouncing their faith to be thus torn hereafter by eternal
chains. The members of the body are the chains of the soul, and the
martyrs freed themselves from temporary fetters rather than submit to
the fetters of everlasting punishment.


1166. THE CRUCIFIXION.

  _Antonello da Messina_ (Venetian: 1444-1493). _See 673._

Signed, and dated 1477, two years later than the very similar picture
at Antwerp. Notice the harmonious colouring, and the expression of
_abandon_ and lassitude, following more poignant grief, in the Virgin's
attitude, with her arms falling down on each knee. "The subject was
never more truly felt, and the little figure of the Virgin at the foot
of the cross contains in it an expression of concentrated grief I never
saw equalled. The _eyes are shut_, the hands simply rest on the knees,
but this very simplicity gives it a truth which far surpasses the
extravagant attitudes of the later painters" (from a letter by Louisa,
Lady Waterford, from whom the picture was purchased in 1884; see Hare's
_The Story of Two Noble Lives_, iii. 77). This picture shows, says Mr.
Gilbert, "the dawning loveliness of Venetian colour, as distinguished
from the vivid beauty of the early Flemish. Instead of the minute
definition of every object characteristic of the Van Eyck School, we
find, spread over a scene of the utmost simplicity, a delicious silvery
haze, melting into the warm tones of a shadowless foreground. In this
small picture we may see already what Venice owed to Flanders--how
Venice would enrich the gift" (_Landscape in Art_, p. 311).


1168. PORTRAIT OF A JESUIT.

  _Willem van der Vliet_ (Dutch: 1584-1642).

      Works by this artist are rare and very little known. He
      belonged to Delft--a town as active in painting as in pottery.
      This picture is signed and dated 1631.

An admirable portrait. The Jesuit father, here depicted with so much
quiet truth and skill, is a good representative of the great order
which had at that time saved the Papacy. He is a student, but the
crucifix is ever on his books. "The Jesuits appear," says Macaulay, "to
have discovered the precise point to which intellectual culture can
be carried without risk of intellectual emancipation." But he turns
round from his book and looks with a smile of tender sadness on the
spectator--he is ready to read your heart and to give you sympathy in
return for confidences.


1169. MRS. ROBERT HOLLOND.

  _Ary Scheffer_ (French-Dutch: 1795-1858).

      An artist who once enjoyed a great vogue (a version of this
      picture was bought in 1845 by the ex-Queen of the French for
      £1000), and whose pictures are historically interesting for
      their extraordinary absence of the colour-sense. Ary Scheffer's
      pictures, says Ruskin (_Academy Notes_, 1858, p. 40), are
      designed "on the assumption that the noblest ideal of colour is
      to be found in dust," and what he said in 1846 of the German
      School is equally true of Ary Scheffer:[229] "Brightness of
      colour is altogether inadmissible without purity and harmony;
      and the sacred painters must not be followed in their frankness
      of unshadowed colour, unless we can also follow them in its
      clearness. As far as I am acquainted with the modern schools
      of Germany, they seem to be entirely ignorant of the value of
      colour as an assistant of feeling, and to think that hardness,
      dryness, and opacity are its virtues as employed in religious
      art; whereas I hesitate not to affirm that in such art, more
      than in any other, clearness, luminousness, and intensity of
      hue are essential to right impression" (_Modern Painters_, vol.
      ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. v. § 15). Ary Scheffer, whose father
      was court painter at Amsterdam, was born at Dordrecht. On the
      death of his father in 1809 his mother removed to Paris, and
      he became a pupil of Pierre Guérin. In 1826 he became drawing
      master in the Orleans family, and for the rest of his life
      he was attached to them. In 1830, in company with Thiers, he
      brought Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, to Paris; in 1848 he
      helped the king to fly, and went with him to Brussels. The
      events of the next few years shocked him so much that for a
      time he "could neither paint, eat, nor sleep," and he ceased
      altogether to exhibit. His best known works are "Paolo and
      Francesca" (1822), and "Dante and Beatrice" (1839). The former
      of these sold in 1842 for over £2000; but at the posthumous
      exhibition of his works, held shortly after his death, his
      reputation suffered greatly, and at subsequent sales the
      prices paid for his pictures went down with a rush. Their
      sentimentality made them popular for a while, but it could not
      save them from the condemnation due to their commonness of
      thought and poverty of colour.

A portrait of the lady--an English resident in Paris, and a friend of
Ary Scheffer--who sat to him for St. Monica. The two pictures were
bequeathed to the Gallery by her husband.


1170. ST. AUGUSTINE AND ST. MONICA.

  _Ary Scheffer_ (French-Dutch: 1795-1858).

To illustrate the popularity which Ary Scheffer enjoyed forty years
ago, it may be interesting to cite what Mrs. Jameson said of this
picture: "I saw in the atelier of the painter, Ary Scheffer, in 1845,
an admirable picture of St. Augustine and his mother Monica. The two
figures, not quite full-length, are seated; she holds his hand in
both hers, looking up to heaven with an expression of enthusiastic
undoubting faith;--'the son of so many tears cannot be cast away!'
He also is looking up with an ardent, eager, but anxious, doubtful
expression, which seems to say, 'Help thou my unbelief.' For profound
and truthful feeling and significance, I know few things in the compass
of modern art that can be compared to this picture" (_Sacred and
Legendary Art_, 1850, p. 186).


1171. THE "ANSIDEI MADONNA."

  _Raphael_ (Urbino: 1483-1520).

      The genius of Raphael Santi (or Raffaello Sanzio, as the
      modern Italians write his name) is an example of the force
      alike of hereditary transmission of gifts and of surrounding
      circumstances. He was the second son (born April 6) of
      Giovanni Santi (see 751), a painter and poet of Urbino. The
      son inherited the father's aptitude for painting; but as
      Giovanni died when Raphael was only eleven, the boy's actual
      teacher was Timoteo Viti, of whom there is a portrait in
      chalks by Raphael in the British Museum. The young Raphael's
      hereditary gifts were nurtured by the artistic atmosphere in
      which he lived. Urbino, the Athens of Umbria, was at this
      time one of the chief centres of artistic and intellectual
      life in Italy; the ducal palace contained a fine collection
      of pictures both by Italian and Flemish painters. Amongst
      the latter were some by Van Eyck, and it is perhaps to this
      influence that we may attribute the miniature-like care of
      Raphael's earliest work, which is conspicuous in the "Vision of
      a Knight," and may be seen again in the jewel painting here.
      An intense power of assimilation--of learning all things from
      all men--characterised Raphael throughout his life, and is one
      of the main causes of the width of range and catholicity of
      taste to which he owes his universal popularity. Thus when he
      went (probably not before 1500) to study under Perugino, he
      so quickly assimilated the style of that master that he has
      been credited with some of the design and even of the work in
      Perugino's masterpiece, just as some of his pictures were, says
      Vasari, mistaken for Perugino's. In 1504 he went to Florence,
      which was his headquarters for the next four years. He at
      once took a leading part in the artistic fraternity there,
      and put one great artist after another under contribution for
      some special power of drawing, beauty of colour, or grace of
      composition. Thus from Signorelli and Michelangelo he learnt
      to study the human form; it was at Florence, says Vasari, that
      Raphael began to study the nude and to make anatomical drawings
      from dissected corpses. From Leonardo da Vinci (sketches from
      whom by Raphael may be seen at Oxford) he learnt soft beauty
      of expression, and it is to this master's influence perhaps
      that the smile of his Madonnas may be traced. In 1508 Raphael
      was invited by the Pope Julius II. to Rome, and there he spent
      the greater part of his life--painting, besides innumerable
      altar-pieces and cabinet pictures, his famous cartoons and
      frescoes. And yet he was only thirty-seven when he died.
      His time was partly occupied too with portraiture, in which
      he excelled. In 1514 he accepted the responsible office of
      architect of St. Peter's, left vacant by the death of his
      friend Bramante. A year later he was installed as director of
      the excavations then in progress among the ruins of ancient
      Rome, and flung himself into the work with devoted ardour. In
      the heavy and multifarious work thus crowded upon him, Raphael
      employed many assistants, among whom were Giulio Romano,
      Giovanni da Udine, and Perino del Vaga, and in some of the
      pictures of his Roman period the master's own hand executed
      little more than the finishing touches. All that we know of
      Raphael's private life and character reflects that innate love
      of beauty which fused all he borrowed into something of his
      own. "All were surpassed by him," says Vasari, "in friendly
      courtesy as well as in art; all confessed the influence of
      his sweet and gracious disposition, which was so replete with
      excellence and so perfect in all the charities, that not only
      was he honoured by men but even by the very animals, who would
      constantly follow his steps and always loved him." In morals he
      was pure, and might indeed be called almost immaculate, judged
      by the lax standard of his age. The Cardinal Bibiena designed
      his niece for Raphael, but--

    Rafael made a century of sonnets,
    Made and wrote them in a certain volume
    Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil
    Else he only used to draw Madonnas:
    These, the world might view--but one, the volume.
    Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.

      He lived a painter among princes--"a model," says Vasari,
      "of how we should comport ourselves towards great men," but
      also a prince among painters--jealous of none, kindly to
      all. "Whenever any other painter, whether known to him or
      not, requested any assistance, he would invariably leave his
      work to do him service; and his school--consisting of some
      fifty painters, all men of ability and distinction--continued
      in such unity and concord that all harsh feelings and evil
      dispositions became subdued and disappeared at the sight of
      him." And so when he died--having impaired his constitution by
      a life of ceaseless toil--Rome went into a paroxysm of grief,
      and flocked, as he lay in state, to catch a last sight of the
      "divine painter." He died on his birthday, April 6, and was
      buried in the Pantheon with great solemnities.

      With regard to Raphael's position in the history of art, it
      is important to distinguish between his different "periods,"
      which correspond, as will be seen, with the divisions of his
      life. The National Gallery is fortunate in having specimens of
      all the periods, and the importance of the pictures from this
      point of view is noted under the several numbers, but it may
      be convenient to summarise the matter briefly here. (1) First,
      or Perugian period, down to 1504--which again may perhaps be
      subdivided as explained under 213. During this period his works
      closely resemble Perugino's--the most typical of them are the
      "Sposalizio," at Milan, copied from Perugino's painting of
      the same subject, now at Caen; and the "Crucifixion," in Mr.
      L. Mond's Collection, of which Vasari says: "If it were not
      for the name of Raphael written upon it, it would be supposed
      by every one to be a work of Pietro Perugino." (2) Second,
      or Florentine period: 1504-1508. To this period belong the
      "Madonna del Granduca" at Florence, "La Belle Jardinière" at
      the Louvre, and in this country the Madonna at Lord Cowper's
      (Panshanger), the Bridgewater Madonna (929), the St. Catherine
      (168), and this "Ansidei Madonna." The importance of this
      picture in the history of art is that it shows the transition
      from the first to the second period, being dated (on the border
      of the Virgin's robe below her left arm) MDVI, 1506. A glance
      at the Perugino No. 288 will show how much of that master's
      influence remains. "To his earlier Perugian manner we ascribe,"
      says Waagen (_Treasures of Art in Great Britain_, iii. 128),
      "the head of the Virgin, which, however, is the most beautiful
      and noble development of this whole style, the rather too
      round body of the otherwise very lovely child, the expression
      of ardent yearning in St. John, as well as the position of
      his feet, resembling that of St. Joseph in the 'Sposalizio,'
      the cast of the draperies of the Virgin and St. Nicholas, the
      use of several colours which have turned very dark, such as
      the blue in the robe of the Virgin, the green in the canopy,
      in the upper garment of St. Nicholas, and in the landscape,
      and the use of gold in the hems, in the glories, in the two
      Greek borders, and in the inscription SALVE MATER CHRISTI on
      the wooden throne." Another point of special value in this
      picture is that, like the Sistine Madonna, it is entirely by
      Raphael's own hand, no pupil or assistant having touched it.
      (3) Third, or Roman period, 1508-1520. The chief works of this
      period are the frescoes in the Vatican. But in this country
      there are the famous cartoons (at South Kensington), and in
      the National Gallery the portrait of Julius II. (27), and the
      Garvagh Madonna (744). The characteristics of this period are,
      besides the perfection of executive power, the substitution
      of classical for religious motive, and the straining after
      dramatic effect.

      From the technical point of view, this division into three (or
      four) periods is instructive, but from the point of view of
      motive a better division is that between his earlier and his
      later work, the turning-point being his arrival in Rome. "In
      his twenty-fifth year," says Ruskin (Edinburgh _Lectures on
      Architecture and Painting_, p. 213), "one half-year only past
      the precise centre of his available life, he was sent for to
      Rome, to decorate the Vatican for Pope Julius II., and having
      until that time worked exclusively in the ancient and stern
      mediæval manner, he, in the first chamber which he decorated
      in that palace, wrote upon its walls the _Mene_, _Tekel_,
      _Upharsin_ of the arts of Christianity. And he wrote it thus:
      On one wall of that chamber he placed a picture of the World
      or Kingdom of _Theology_, presided over by _Christ_. And on
      the side wall of that same chamber he placed the World or
      Kingdom of _Poetry_, presided over by _Apollo_. And from that
      spot, and from that hour, the intellect and the art of Italy
      date their degradation.... And it was brought about in great
      part by the very excellences of the man who had thus marked
      the commencement of decline. The perfection of execution and
      the beauty of feature which were attained in his works, and
      in those of his greatest contemporaries, rendered finish of
      execution and beauty of form the chief objects of all artists;
      and thenceforward execution was looked for rather than thought,
      and beauty rather than veracity.... The mediæval principles
      led _up_ to Raphael, and the modern principles lead _down_
      from him." The position of Raphael in the history of art
      is thus closely parallel to that of his great contemporary
      Michael Angelo (see 790). In Michael Angelo the art of Florence
      reached its culmination and fell rapidly to Giulio Romano and
      Venusti. In Raphael the art of Umbria was perfected and led
      down to the conventional sentimentalities against which the
      "Pre-Raphaelites" have in modern times revolted.

The "Ansidei Madonna," so called from having been painted for the
Ansidei family at Perugia,[230] was bought from the Duke of Marlborough
by the nation for £70,000--more than three times the highest price ever
before paid for a picture, and equal to more than £14 per square inch.
The importance of the picture to the student has been partly described
above; but to this must be added its unusual size and excellent state
of preservation, and the fact that whilst on the one hand the National
Gallery had before no _chef d'oeuvre_ of Raphael, the number of such
works not already placed in foreign galleries was very small.[231]
On its own merits the "Ansidei Madonna" is by common consent one of
the most perfect pictures in the world. It has all the essentials of
the greatest art. First it is "wrought in entirely consistent and
permanent materials. The gold is represented by painting, not laid
on with real gold, and the painting is so secure that nearly four
hundred years have produced in it no harmful change." "The exquisite
purity of the colour and the silvery and luminous quality of its
tones"[232] are as remarkable to-day as they must have been when the
panel left the painter's easel. Secondly, "the figures are in perfect
peace. Those are the two first attributes of the best art. Faultless
workmanship and perfect serenity; a continuous, not momentary,
action, or entire inaction; you are to be interested, in the living
creatures, not in what is happening to them. Then the third attribute
of the best art is that it compels you to think of the spirit of the
creature, and therefore of its face, more than of its body. And the
fourth is that in the face you shall be led to see only beauty or
joy--never vileness, vice, or pain" (_Relation between Michael Angelo
and Tintoret_, pp. 14, 15). In fulfilling these essentials of the
highest art, the picture becomes also one of the noblest embodiments
of Christianity. Raphael is above all the painter of motherhood and
childhood--of the self-forgetting love of the one, and the fearless
faith of the other--the human relationship which of all others is the
most divine. On either side are two saints--types both of them of
the peace of Christianity. In the figure of St. John the Baptist on
the left--with his rough camel skin upon him, and an expression of
ecstatic contemplation on his face--the joy that comes from a life of
self-sacrifice is made manifest; in that of the good Bishop Nicholas
of Bari, the peace that comes from knowledge. The three balls at his
feet are a favourite emblem of the saint; typical partly of the mystery
of the Trinity, but referring also to the three purses of gold which
he is said to have thrown into a poor man's window that his daughters
might not be portionless. Further we may notice how the same impression
of infinite peace is conveyed by the landscape, and especially by the
open sky visible on either side of the throne. This open sky "is of
all visible things the least material, the least finite, the farthest
withdrawn from the earth prison-house, the most typical of the nature
of God, the most suggestive of the glory of His dwelling-place. For
the sky of night, though we may know it boundless, is dark; it is a
studded vault, a roof that seems to shut us in and down; but the bright
distance has no limit: we feel its infinity, as we rejoice in its
purity of light" (_Modern Painters_, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. v.
§ 5).[233]

It has been said above that the Ansidei Madonna is "by common consent
one of the most perfect pictures in the world." Criticisms which
have been published since its acquisition by the National Gallery
require that statement to be modified. Thus, Mr. G. A. Storey, R.A.,
in the course of a public lecture, has remarked that "as compared
with Raphael's other works, the Ansidei Madonna lacked the touch of
nature, the play and harmony that were characteristic of the master.
All the heads were looking in the same direction, and the figure of the
Virgin was scarcely graceful. Nor was there the unity necessary to a
complete composition, for each figure seemed unconnected with the rest,
and, indeed, they seemed to be almost unconscious of each other's
existence." Mr. Ford Madox Brown (_Magazine of Art_, Feb. 1890) is more
severe still. "The Bishop saint of Bari," he says, "is certainly a fine
figure, worthy of the master it is attributed to. The Virgin and Child,
however, are for sentiment just like two wax doll lay figures, making
it hard to conceive how the same mighty hand can have produced anything
so tame; while the figure of the Baptist, with ill-drawn legs, is
positively repulsive both for pose and for expression of countenance.
Surely Raphael could have had no hand in it." Mr. Pater, on the other
hand, commends the Ansidei Madonna to students of Raphael as more
worthy of admiration than any other work of the master: "I find there,
at first sight, with something of the pleasure one has in a proposition
of Euclid, a sense of the power of the understanding, in the economy
with which he has reduced his material to the simplest terms. He is
painting in Florence, but for Perugia, and sends it a specimen of its
own old art--Mary and the babe enthroned, with St. Nicholas and the
Baptist in attendance on either side. The kind of thing people there
had already seen so many times, but done better, in a sense not to
be measured by degrees, with a wholly original freedom and life and
grace, though he perhaps is unaware, done better as a whole, because
better in every minute particular, than ever before. The scrupulous
scholar, aged twenty-three, is now indeed a master, but still goes
carefully. Note, therefore, how much mere exclusion counts for in the
positive effect of his work. There is a saying that the true artist is
known best by what he omits. Yes, because the whole question of good
taste is involved precisely in such jealous omission. Note this, for
instance, in the familiar Apennine background, with its blue hills
and brown towns, faultless, for once--for once only--and observe, in
the Umbrian pictures around, how often such background is marred by
grotesque natural, or architectural detail, by incongruous or childish
incident. In this cool, pearl-gray, quiet place, where colour tells for
double,--the jewelled cope, the painted book in the hand of Mary, the
chaplet of red coral,--one is reminded that among all classical writers
Raphael's preference was for the faultless Virgil. How orderly, how
divinely clean and sweet the flesh, the vesture, the floor, the earth
and sky! Ah, say rather the hand, the method of the painter! There is
an unmistakable pledge of strength, of movement and animation in the
cast of the Baptist's countenance, but reserved, repressed. Strange,
Raphael has given him a staff of transparent crystal. Keep, then, to
that picture as the embodied formula of Raphael's genius. Amid all he
has here already achieved, full, we may think, of the quiet assurance
of what is to come, his attitude is still that of the scholar; he
seems still to be saying, before all things, from first to last, 'I am
utterly purposed that I will not offend'" (_Miscellaneous Studies_, p.
53).


1172. CHARLES THE FIRST.

  _Van Dyck_ (Flemish: 1599-1641). _See 49._

This famous picture was one of many equestrian portraits of Charles
I. which Van Dyck painted at his court. It is, however, unique among
them. In all the others,--the Windsor picture, the replica at Hampton
Court, and the pictures in the Earl of Warwick's and the Marquis of
Lothian's Collections, the king faces the spectator, and rides, as it
were, straight out of the picture, the horse being white. The size,
proportions, and composition of this picture are different. The horse
is dun-coloured, and the king is seen in profile. A small picture at
Buckingham Palace was probably the original design or sketch of it. It
was sold after Charles's death for £150 by the Parliament, and in 1885
was bought by another Parliament--from the Duke of Marlborough--for the
great price of £17,500 (_see_ under 1171).

It is a courtier's portrait of the idol of the cavaliers--a portrait of
the good side of a bad king. Notice first the prominence given to the
noble horse (_cf._ under 156), almost to the point of clumsiness. Then
in Charles himself, note the stately bearing, the personal dignity, the
almost feminine refinement. It is a portrait of personal courage--with
no suspicion of any fatal want of presence of mind; of dignity--with
the obstinacy, which was its reverse side, left out. In such a portrait
"of a Cavalier by a Cavalier" Van Dyck's work is invested with an
enduring pathos for all Englishmen. One remembers only, in looking upon
this picture of him, Charles's graces, not his faults. One thinks of
him as the man who "nothing common did, nor mean, upon that memorable
scene." And so considered, how eloquent becomes the isolation in which
the painter has here left him. With him, indeed, is Sir Thomas Morton,
his equerry, but the king does not see him. Bareheaded he sits, gazing
into futurity.


1173. AN UNKNOWN SUBJECT.

  _School of Giorgione_ (Venetian: 16th Century). _See 269._

Another picture of the golden age (_cf._ 1123) such as Giorgione,
we are told, loved to paint,--"men and women enjoying the golden
tranquillity; here is seen the haughty lion, there the humble lamb;
in another part we behold the swift flying hart, with many other
terrestrial animals." The picture before us precisely agrees with this
general description, but the particular subject of it is unknown.[234]
A child, it would seem, is being initiated into some order of the
golden age--he is being dedicated, perhaps, to a life of song, for the
stately personage on the throne wears the poet's crown of wild olive,
whilst the young man on the steps below him lightly touches a lute,
and has books by his side. The page bears a rich dish of fruits and
herbs, for the golden age is vegetarian; whilst fawns and a leopard,
with a peacock and other birds, attend the court of the king of song.
When in the Bohn Collection, this picture was ascribed to Giorgione.
For some interesting remarks on its possible authorship and subject,
see the _Times_, December 22, 1885, where resemblances in this picture
to pictures of Carpaccio and Pordenone, as well as of Giorgione,
are pointed out. Sir Edward Poynter says that the picture "has
considerable affinity with the two pictures attributed to Giorgione
in the Uffizzi Gallery at Florence, but is weaker in execution and
effect, especially in the landscape" (_The National Gallery_, i. 26).
"True," says Mr. Herbert Cook, "the landscape has been renovated;
true, the Giorgionesque depth and richness is gone, the mellow glow
of the 'Epiphany' (1160) is sadly wanting; but who can deny the charm
of the picturesque scenery, which vividly recalls the landscape
background elsewhere in the master's own work? who can fail to admire
the natural and unstudied grouping of the figures, the artlessness of
the whole, the loving simplicity with which the painter has done his
work? Sincerity and naïveté are too apparent for this to be the work
of any but a quite young artist, and one whose style is so thoroughly
'Giorgionesque' as to be none other than the young Giorgione himself.
In my opinion, this is one of his earliest essays into the region of
romance, painted probably before his twenty-first year" (_Giorgione_,
p. 92).


1188. THE BETRAYAL OF CHRIST.


1189. THE PROCESSION TO CALVARY.

  _Ugolino_ (Sienese: died 1339).

      Ugolino was one of the founders of the Sienese School. So
      great was his reputation that he was unanimously chosen by
      the Florentines, in preference to their own artists, to paint
      the altar-pieces of their two great churches; whilst another
      picture that he painted for them was credited with miraculous
      powers. These little pictures are portions of the one painted
      by him for the high altar of Sta. Croce. "He always adhered,"
      says Vasari (i. 138), "in great part to the Greek manner, as
      one who, having grown old in that method, was induced by a
      sort of obstinacy to follow the manner of Cimabue, rather than
      that of Giotto." The points which have been already noticed as
      characteristic of his contemporary, Duccio (see 566), may be
      traced equally in Ugolino.

Notice in 1188 that the disciples are not mere conventional types,
but that an attempt is made to give them each an individuality, and
to express their characters on their faces. The same expressions may
be noticed again in 1189. It is interesting, too, to observe how the
first attempts of painting (as of poetry) to express action were epic,
rather than dramatic. The painter tries to tell the whole story at
once; here is Judas giving the traitor's kiss, there is Peter cutting
off the ear of the high priest's servant, and beside them are all the
other characters of the story (_cf._ under 579). As art advances,
it becomes on the other hand dramatic; the painter seizes on the
essential point and makes his picture out of that. The difference may
be seen by contrasting Ugolino's picture with one of the same subject
at Florence by Giotto, which Ruskin thus describes: "See what choice
Giotto made of his moments. Plenty of choice for him--in pain. The
Flagellation--the Mocking--the Bearing the Cross; all habitually given
by the Margheritones, and their school, as extremes of pain. 'No,'
thinks Giotto. 'There was worse than all that. Many a good man has been
mocked, spitefully entreated, spitted on, slain. But who was ever so
betrayed?' ... He paints the laying hands on him in the garden, but
with only two principal figures--Judas and Peter, of course: Judas and
Peter were always principal in the old Byzantine composition,--Judas
giving the kiss, Peter cutting off the servant's ear. But the two
are here not merely principal, but almost alone in sight, all the
other figures thrown back; and Peter is not at all concerned about
the servant, or his struggle with him. He has got him down, but looks
back suddenly at Judas giving the kiss. 'What!--_you_ are the traitor,
then--you!' 'Yes,' says Giotto; 'and you, also, in an hour more'"
(_Mornings in Florence_, ii. 41).


1190. A BOY'S PORTRAIT.

  _Ascribed to Clouet_ (French: about 1510-1572). _See 660._

This picture was presented to the Gallery by Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., and
it is interesting to note the sage-green background which Mr. Watts has
himself sometimes employed.


1192, 1193. SKETCHES FOR ALTAR-PIECES

  _Giovanni Battista Tiepolo_ (Venetian: 1692-1769).

      Tiepolo, one of the leaders in the revival of Venetian art (see
      under 1100), was the Paul Veronese of the eighteenth century.
      "Living," says Sir F. Burton, "in the era of periwig in art
      as a dress, he was at a sore disadvantage as compared with
      his great prototype of the sixteenth century; but he steered
      a pretty clear course between vapid classicality and buckram
      fashion. Gifted with a brilliant fancy, and master of all the
      resources of his art, Tiepolo formed a style which, whatever
      its shortcomings, is splendidly decorative. In his easel
      pictures, he is at his very best. Here he was not tempted by
      vast surfaces into that looseness of composition and hastiness
      of execution that often lessen the value of his frescoes;
      here, therefore, he could indulge his feeling for compact
      architectonic arrangement, display force of harmonious colour,
      and exercise a brilliant method of handling akin to that of
      Paul Veronese." Tiepolo worked for most of his life at Venice;
      but went also to execute commissions at Milan, Wurzburg (where
      his paintings in the Archbishop's Palace may still be seen),
      and Madrid, in which latter city he died. Of his frescoes at
      Venice the finest are those of "Antony and Cleopatra" in the
      Palazzo Labia. Copies of these are in the Arundel Society's
      Collection.

"Touched in with all the brilliant, flashing, dexterous _bravura_ of
the last of the rear-guard of the Venetians. The pictorial art of
Venice finished with Tiepolo, and it seemed as if he was resolved that
it should not die ignominiously, for in spirit and gaiety he was little
inferior to Veronese himself. He had not the stronger qualities of his
model; Veronese's grasp of character, his air of nobility, his profound
and imaginative harmonies of colour, are wanting in the eighteenth
century painter" (_Times_, December 22, 1885).


1194. CHRIST DRIVING OUT THE TRADERS.

  _Marcello Venusti_ (Florentine: 1515-1579).

      Venusti, a native of Como, was a pupil of Perino del Vaga,
      but best known as assistant to Michelangelo, of whose works
      he supplied copies with variations to suit different patrons.
      In the oil copy of "The Last Judgment," now at Naples, he
      introduced in the left-hand corner a portrait of the master
      himself. He was also employed to put into colour designs made
      by Michelangelo.

There are drawings by Michelangelo in the British Museum for the
figures in this composition. Notice how everything is sacrificed to
violent action and contorted position--the money-changers whom Christ
is driving out of the Temple are composed as it were for a ballet of
limbs. Notice also the "debased" architectural background--the absurdly
distorted pillars with their puerile capitals.


1195. THE BIRTH OF VENUS.

  _Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See 38._

A finished study for a salver which was executed in silver for Charles
I.

      "The central oval shows a goddess borne along and attended on
      the surface of the waves by nymphs and tritons; sea gods and
      goddesses, riding on aquatic monsters, disport themselves in
      the broad flat border surrounding the central panel. Rubens may
      be said to have here surpassed himself in those qualities of
      movement and brilliant execution in which he was unrivalled.
      His form, often florid in contour, although always supple, has
      here a grace and beauty entirely in harmony with the classic
      theme, and the personages are inspired with that immortal
      gaiety which has so rarely found expression, save in the work
      of the master's contemporary, our national poet, since it
      vanished at the final decay of Greek art and literature. Of a
      piece with the delightful imaginative qualities so prodigally
      lavished on the present panel is the truly marvellous
      execution. The hand has played over the surface with a
      lightness and delicacy surprising even to those familiar with
      the touch of the master in his first sketches for important
      compositions. The method employed is simple and direct; the
      figures have been outlined in pen and ink, then a general glaze
      has been spread over the entire surface, on which the forms
      were modelled in white and gray, the ultimate result being a
      warm silvery tone" (_Times_, December 22, 1885).

This design, which was sold at the Hamilton sale (1882) for £1680, was
bought for the nation three years later at the Beckett Denison sale for
£672.


1196. A COMBAT BETWEEN LOVE AND CHASTITY.

  _Unknown_ (Florentine School; 15th Century).

      Probably by some unknown disciple of Botticelli. Formerly
      ascribed to Botticelli himself--an ascription which, owing to
      the absence of that master's predominating facial type, as well
      as to the accuracy of landscape such as he never attempted,
      has now been abandoned. But the exquisite workmanship--visible
      only in a good light--of the shield and the quiver indicates
      the hand of one of the goldsmith painters, whilst the
      allegorical invention and the atmosphere of imaginative poetry
      have "the true Botticellian ring" (see _Times_, December 22,
      1885; see also Morelli's _Borghese Gallery_, p. 87 _n._). The
      picture is one of a series which were probably painted for
      furniture-panels. The one giving the sequel to our story, and
      representing Chastity on a triumphal car, with Love sitting
      bound in front, is in the Turin Gallery.

Chastity clothed only in white innocence is assailed by Love. She
receives his arrows on a shield of polished steel; the points of the
arrows break and burst forth into tiny golden flames--each temptation
only causing the sacred fire of Chastity to burn more brightly. The
scene is laid in a romantic landscape where everything is pure and
beautiful. The field is enamelled with flowers--

    Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine;
    And all, save the spirit of man, is divine.

Beyond, in the bend of a river, two swans float on its tranquil
surface: a tall oak sapling rises straight and firm, and over all rests
a clear blue sky. The picture recalls the scene in Milton's _Comus_--

    My sister is not so defenceless left
    As you may imagine; she has a hidden strength,
    Which you remember not.

    _Second Brother._ What hidden strength,
    Unless the strength of Heaven, if you mean that?

    _First Brother._ I mean that too, but yet a hidden strength
    Which, if Heaven gave it, may be term'd her own.
    'Tis Chastity, my brother, Chastity;
    She that has that, is clad in complete steel.


1199. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Unknown_ (Florentine: 15th Century).
  _See also_ (p. xxi)

On the right is St. John; on the left an angel crowned with a chaplet
of roses and bearing the annunciation lily. Notice that the frame
ornamented with modelled stucco forms part of the picture, and is
indeed part of the same panel.


1200, 1201. GROUPS OF SAINTS.

  _Macrino d'Alba_ (Lombard: about 1470-1528).

      Macrino was born at Alba in Piedmont. "There is no foundation
      for the belief that his name was Giangiacomo Fava. His early
      Lombard training was considerably modified by a visit to
      Rome, and a study of the Florentine masters and Ghirlandajo's
      influence is to be seen in his work. His pictures are easily
      recognisable from the frequent recurrence of similar types
      and attitudes" (Catalogue of the Burlington Fine Arts Club's
      Exhibition, 1898, p. lxxvii.). The dates on his works range
      from 1496 to 1508. They are to be found in the Certosa of
      Pavia, at Alba, and in the Turin Gallery. He belongs to the
      pre-Leonardo school of Lombardy, and was perhaps a pupil of
      Vincenzo Foppa (729).

In the first group (1200) are St. Peter Martyr (for whom see 812),
with the knife and plenty of blood on his head, and a bishop in full
robes. In the second (1201), St. Thomas Aquinas looking with an almost
comic squint at a crucifix, and John the Baptist. On the pages of St.
Thomas's book are the words in Latin, "I have kept the commandments of
my father"; on those of St John the Baptist, "Behold the Lamb of God,
that taketh away the sin of the world."


1202. MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH SAINTS.

  _Bonifazio, the elder_ (Veronese: about 1490-1540).

      Morelli disentangles from the confusions of art-historians and
      critics three different painters of this name, whom he calls
      respectively Bonifazio Veronese I., Bonifazio Veronese II., and
      Bonifazio Veneziano (see _German Galleries_, pp. 184-194). The
      elder Bonifazio Veronese, the painter of this picture, was a
      pupil of Palma Vecchio, and one of the most brilliant of the
      later Venetian painters. "His bright conception," says Morelli,
      "and the light gracefulness of his figures seem to me never
      to belie his native home, Verona; yet, as a technician, he is
      an out-and-out Venetian. While the chords of his colouring
      are neither so delicate and startling as in Giorgione, nor so
      profound and powerful as in Palma and Titian, nor so ingenious
      as in Lotto, yet they wield a peculiar charm over the eye
      of the spectator by their bright, cheerful, and harmonious
      lustre." Bonifazio's earlier works have been frequently
      ascribed to Palma. Such was the case with the present picture,
      a work of gorgeous colour and in admirable preservation. In
      his later works the influence of Giorgione makes itself felt.
      A much-damaged picture by Bonifazio at Hampton Court, "Diana
      and Actæon," was long ascribed to Giorgione. Venice possesses
      many works of this "God-made painter," as Ruskin calls him.
      None is finer than the "Dives and Lazarus" in the Accademia, a
      picture of sumptuous colour and exquisitely poetical sentiment.
      In the Brera at Milan is another splendid work by Bonifazio,
      long attributed to Giorgione--the "Finding of Moses," a subject
      of which he was fond, and into which he introduced numerous
      figures in the gorgeous Venetian costumes of his day.

A composition belonging to a class which Palma Vecchio brought into
favour, and which the Italians call _Sante Conversazioni_--groups,
in restful attitudes, framed in sunny landscapes, with blue mountain
distances. Bonifazio's landscape backgrounds are very fine, and he was
fond, like Titian, of introducing into them the scenery of the Dolomite
mountains. On the right is St. Catherine holding a fragment of her
wheel, while the youthful St. John the Baptist, standing on another
fragment, stoops to kiss the infant Christ's foot--an action symbolical
of the kingship of the Saviour ("Thou hast put all things under him").
On the left is St. James--with his staff, borne always by him as the
first of the apostles who departed to fulfil the Gospel mission, and
dressed as a pilgrim--Campostella, where his body was reputed to be,
being in the middle ages a favourite place of pilgrimage. Behind St.
James is St. Jerome. Notice the significance of the incident in the
middle distance--a shepherd asleep, while a wolf is devouring a sheep
("But the Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep").


1203. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Cariani_ (Bergamese: about 1480-1541).

      Of Giovanni Busi, called Cariani, no personal details are
      known. He was born near Bergamo, and many works by this fine
      colourist are in the galleries of that town. Others may
      be seen at the Brera in Milan. Cariani, who seems to have
      resided at Venice, is supposed to have been a pupil of his
      fellow-countryman, Palma Vecchio. Morelli thus distinguishes
      Cariani's style from that of Bonifazio Veronese (see 1202),
      who was also a pupil of Palma: "The type of the Madonna in
      Cariani is rustic, but more energetic and serious, less worldly
      than in Bonifazio, whose holy virgins and female martyrs,
      with their soft, sweet expression and gentle grace, often
      border on the sentimental. These masters also differ in the
      harmony of their colours: the Bergamese is pithy and powerful,
      but often heavy and dull; the Veronese, clear, lovely, and
      brilliant; Bonifazio's landscapes are the lightest among those
      of the Venetians, those in Cariani's pictures are brownish,
      and the lines far from beautiful" (_Italian Masters in German
      Galleries_, 1883, p. 193).

Notice the rustic type of the Madonna; she is a daughter of the
mountains--the mountains above Bergamo, from which the painter came,
and which figure in the background. The picture is a characteristic
piece of provincial art; the expression of "a simple, sturdy, energetic
mountain-folk who do not always know how to unite refinement and grace
with their inbred strength and vigour" (Morelli, _ibid._ p. 4). The
picture is "interesting mainly," says Mr. Monkhouse, "for its costumes,
its light-heartedness and florid colour, and as another of those _Sante
Conversazioni_ of which his master, Palma, was the inventor, and
which took the place of the more holy 'Holy Families' of an earlier
art,--pictures in which the Virgin became a simple woman of a wholly
mundane beauty, and the saints but her friends in rich costumes,
enjoying themselves somewhat sadly in the open air" (_In the National
Gallery_, p. 248).


1206. LANDSCAPE AND FIGURES.

  _Salvator Rosa_ (Neapolitan: 1615-1673). _See 84._

A good example of Salvator's scenic effects in landscape. The sense of
power in the painting, the "vigorous imagination, the dexterous and
clever composition" of Salvator are well shown; but "all are rendered
valueless by coarseness of feeling, and habitual non-reference to
nature." (See for further examination of Salvator's deficiencies in
this respect _Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 5,
sec. iii. ch. iii. § 7, sec. vi. ch. i. § 11; vol. ii. pt. iii. sec.
ii. ch. ii. § 19.)


1211, 1212. SCENES AT A TOURNAMENT.

  _Domenico Morone_ (Veronese: 1442-1508?)

      Domenico Morone was in 1493 called upon by the Veronese
      authorities in conjunction with Liberale (1134) to adjudicate
      upon an artistic dispute. It seems, therefore, that he was
      recognised as a leading painter of the day. This also is
      Vasari's estimate: Domenico, he says, was in higher repute than
      any other painter of Verona, Liberale alone excepted. Little,
      however, is known to us about Domenico. Only two pictures are
      known to bear his signature; one of these, a "Madonna and
      Child," is in the Berlin Gallery. He was the father of the
      better known Francesco Morone (285).

Possibly scenes from the _fêtes_ at the marriage of Isabella d'Este
and Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua.[235] Domenico Morone,
called Pellacane, the dog-skinner, from his father's occupation, may
have been present at the marriage ceremony, which took place in 1490;
but at any rate these little pictures are of historical interest as
contemporary illustrations. The scene in both is a tilt court, with its
seat of honour in the middle. In the first the knights are tilting, the
marquis being on his throne and the seats filled with ladies. In the
second the tilting is over, courtiers and ladies are dancing in the
side compartments; whilst in the centre a knight in full armour, but
bareheaded, awaits his award of victory from Isabella and her husband,
who are standing on the dais. There is much artistic merit in the
sprightly way in which such momentary actions as that of the page going
to spring over the partition in 1212 are rendered (see _Times_, July
24, 1886).


1213. PORTRAIT OF A PROFESSOR.

  _Gentile Bellini_ (Venetian: 1427-1507).

      Gentile was the elder brother of Giovanni (189), and was named
      after Gentile da Fabriano under whom his father had studied.
      In 1464, after severe training in his father's school, he
      moved from Padua to Venice, and was employed by the State.
      His high reputation is shown by the fact that, when in 1479
      the Sultan Mahomet II. applied to the Venetians to send him a
      good painter, he was deputed by them to go to Constantinople.
      His visit there was marked by a well-known incident. He showed
      the Sultan a picture of Herodias's daughter with the head of
      John the Baptist. The Sultan objected to the bleeding head
      as untrue to nature, and to prove his point ordered a slave
      to be beheaded in Bellini's presence. The painter fled from
      the scene of such experiments, but the influence of his visit
      is to be seen in the oriental costumes which he was fond of
      introducing into his pictures (as in the studies in the British
      Museum and the library of Windsor Castle). The portrait of
      the great Ottoman conqueror acquired by the late Sir Henry
      Layard is an autograph replica of the work painted by Gentile
      at Constantinople. On his return to Venice he was taken into
      the permanent employment of the State, and executed many works
      in the Ducal Palace and elsewhere; some were destroyed in
      the fire of 1577, others remain. In 1486 Titian, then a boy
      of nine, entered Gentile's studio. Easel pictures by him are
      very scarce. His principal works are at Venice, and are the
      most valuable record extant of the city as it was in his time.
      They are described and highly praised by Ruskin in his _Guide
      to the Academy at Venice_. In the same style is the "St. Mark
      preaching at Alexandria," now in the Brera at Milan. This work,
      left unfinished when Gentile died, was completed, as his will
      enjoined, by Giovanni.

Supposed to be a portrait of Girolamo Malatini, Professor of
Mathematics in Venice (notice his brass compasses), who is said to
have taught Gentile and his brother Giovanni the rules of perspective.
"The portrait fully justifies the fame that Gentile had acquired as a
painter of portraits, and shows him the forerunner of Titian" (Layard's
edition of "Kugler," i. 306). The prominence given in this picture to
the sitter's hands should be noticed. The older tradition strictly
limited portraiture to the representation of the head only, or at most
to the bust. Afterwards the expressiveness of the human hand _per se_
came to be recognised (see Mr. Herbert Cook's _Giorgione_, p. 19, and
compare the portraits Nos. 808 and 1440).


1214. CORIOLANUS, VOLUMNIA, AND VETURIA.

  _Michele da Verona_ (Veronese: 1470-1523?)

      Michele, a pupil of Domenico Morone (1211), was a contemporary
      and sometimes an assistant of Cavazzola (735). The works of
      the two are easily distinguishable. Michele, says Morelli,
      "is more pointed in the foldings of his draperies, as well as
      in the fingers of his hands, which are always rather stumpy
      in Cavazzola. In conception, however, Cavazzola is far above
      Michele, and also more elegant and noble in his drawing"
      (_German Galleries_, p. 54). Many of Michele's works are to be
      seen at Verona. His landscape backgrounds, as in the present
      picture, are interesting.

Coriolanus, a noble Roman, so called from Corioli, a city of the
Volscians he had taken, bore himself haughtily, and was banished.
Nursing his revenge, he threw himself into the arms of the Volscians,
determined henceforth to bear himself "As if a man were author of
himself, And knew no other kin," and advanced at their head upon Rome.
The Romans, in terror, endeavoured in vain to appease him, and at last
sent out his wife, Volumnia, with her child, here kneeling before him,
and his mother, Veturia (Volumnia in Shakespeare's play), to intercede.
In their presence "the strong man gave way; he throws himself on his
knee, and is restored once more to human love"--

            Like a dull actor now,
    I have forgot my part ... O, a kiss
    Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!
    Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss
    I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip
    Hath virgin'd it e'er since. Ye gods! I prate,
    And the most noble mother of the world
    Leave unsaluted: sink, my knee, i' the earth.

  SHAKESPEARE: _Coriolanus_, Act v. Sc. 3.


1215. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Domenico Veneziano_ (died 1461). _See 766._

For the history of this picture (now withdrawn from exhibition) see
under 766. The restorations of 1851 there referred to were in great
part removed after the acquisition of the picture by the National
Gallery. But "it was found, late in 1904, that its state threatened
its immediate destruction, and it was hoped that the mischief might
be arrested by re-lining. The pigment was, however, found to be
falling from the plaster ground in such a way that re-lining, which
would affect only the adherence of the ground to the canvas backing,
was useless, and very reluctant recourse was had to the process of
transferring the picture itself to canvas. This transfer resulted in
such a loss to the picture that it has been withdrawn from public
exhibition, and, for the present, it is thought better to leave it as a
genuine picture, of interest to connoisseurs, rather than subject it to
the extensive repainting without which it would hardly be intelligible
to the ordinary visitor" (_Director's Report_, 1905). A small copy of
the picture is exhibited among the Arundel Society's Collection.


1216, 1216 a & b. THE FALL OF THE REBEL ANGELS.

  _Spinello Aretino_ (Tuscan: about 1333-1410). _See 581._

These fragments of a fresco, now transferred to canvas, are of
particular interest from the following mention of it by Vasari. He
relates how Spinello Aretino, after executing important works in
various cities of Italy, returned to his native city, Arezzo, and very
shortly settled down to decorate the church of S. Maria degli Angeli.
The subject chosen was certain stories from the life of St. Michael.
"At the high altar," says Vasari, "he represented Lucifer fixing his
seat in the North, with the fall of the angels, who are changed into
devils as they descend to the earth. In the air appears St. Michael
in combat with the old serpent of seven heads and ten horns, while
beneath and in the centre of the picture is Lucifer, already changed
into a most hideous beast. And so anxious was the artist to make him
frightful and horrible that it is said--such is sometimes the power
of imagination--that the figure he had painted appeared to him in his
sleep, demanding to know where the painter had seen him looking so
ugly as that, and wherefore he permitted his pencils to offer him, the
said Lucifer, so mortifying an affront." Vasari attributes a fatal
result to this vision. "The artist awoke," he says, "in such extremity
of terror that he was unable to cry out, but shook and trembled so
violently that his wife, awakening, hastened to his assistance. But
the shock was so great that he was on the point of expiring suddenly
from this accident, and did not in fact survive it beyond a very short
time, during which he remained in a dispirited condition, with eyes
from which all intelligence had departed" (i. 269). In fact, however,
Spinello lived many years and executed several important works after
the date in question. Some years ago the church of the Angeli was
dismantled, and the greater portion of the frescoes perished. Sir A.
H. Layard, who was passing Arezzo at the time, was fortunately able
to secure a large piece of the principal fresco. The fragment is from
the centre of the composition, and contains a portion of the figure of
Michael and six of the angels following him. The archangel, with raised
sword, is striking at the dragon; his attendants, armed with spears and
swords, thrust down the demons. Besides these figures, Sir A. H. Layard
was able to save a portion of the decorated border of the fresco (1216
A & B). These he presented to the nation in 1886.


1217. THE ISRAELITES GATHERING MANNA.

  _Ercole Roberti de' Grandi_ (Ferrarese: 1450-1496).
  _See 1127._

"The lithe and sinewy form in the nude figure of the young man, the
accurate draughtsmanship, the firm modelling, the care and study
bestowed even on the tiny figures in the background, the dramatic
intention and impression of vitality, indicate a familiarity with the
works of Mantegna" (_Times_, July 24, 1886). The artist exhibits, adds
Sir F. Burton, "no less appreciation of natural grace in the female
figures than of dignity in the principal male personages."


1218, 1219. JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN.

  _Francesco Ubertini_ (Florentine: 1494-1557).

      Francesco, the son of Ubertino, a goldsmith, called Il
      Bacchiacca, studied first under Perugino, and afterwards with
      Franciabigio and Andrea del Sarto. He was also at one time
      in Rome, where he lived on terms of intimacy with Giulio
      Romano and Benvenuto Cellini; he is mentioned in Cellini's
      Autobiography. He was "more particularly successful," says
      Vasari, "in the execution of small figures, which he executed
      to perfection and with infinite patience. Ultimately Bacchiacca
      was received into the service of the Duke Cosimo, seeing
      that he was excellent in the delineation of all kinds of
      animals, and was therefore employed to decorate a study for
      his Excellency, which he did with great ability, covering the
      same with birds of various kinds, together with rare plants
      and foliage. At a later period he painted in fresco the grotto
      of a fountain which is in the garden of the Pitti Palace, and
      also prepared the designs for hangings of a bed to be richly
      embroidered all over with stories in small figures, this being
      considered the most gorgeous decoration of the kind that has
      ever been executed in similar work, seeing that the designs
      of Francesco have been worked in embroidery, thickly mingled
      with pearls and other costly material, by Antonio, the brother
      of Francesco, who is an excellent master in embroidery" (iv.
      492). It would appear from Vasari's account that Francesco's
      works consisted of _predelle_ for altar-pieces, and pictorial
      adornments for wedding chests, and other pieces of "art
      furniture."[236] Morelli, however, in an interesting chapter
      on Bacchiacca (_Roman Galleries_, pp. 103-113), claims for him
      a much more important position, ascribing to him among other
      works the charming and celebrated "Portrait of a Boy" in the
      Louvre, commonly attributed to Raphael.

The present panels decorated the room in the house at Florence, from
which Pontormo's picture of Joseph also comes (see under 1131); they
were doubtless painted for "cassoni," or large chests which were used
by the Italians of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries
as wardrobes. "In those palmy days art was welcomed everywhere in
Italy, and had a share in all the concerns of men, and in all the
events and festivities of daily life. The nobles took a delight in
enriching their palaces, their country houses, and the chapels in
their churches, with paintings and sculpture, and even required that
their household furniture should, whilst useful, be graceful and
beautiful." Our panels were purchased many years ago from the heirs of
the Borgherini.

Several incidents occur in each of the two pictures, but the main
figures constantly recur, and we recognise them by their dress and
look. (1218). On the left, in this picture, are Joseph's brethren
travelling in search of corn towards the land of Egypt, quaint figures
in fantastic dresses, with little Benjamin, a child in a blue frock,
and Reuben weeping, and another brother trying in vain to console him.
"And the famine was sore in the land.... And the men took ... Benjamin;
and rose up, and went down to Egypt" (Genesis xliii. 1, 15). On the
right in the same picture is Joseph welcoming his brothers in the
portico of the palace, Pharaoh's armed guard outside looking rather
grimly and inhospitably on the intruders. The landscape is green and
picturesque. It is noticeable that blue (the colour of hope) is here
made sacred to Joseph and Benjamin, the children of promise, who are in
every instance dressed alike.

(1219). In the companion panel the further history of Joseph and his
brethren is depicted in three scenes or compartments, divided by
pillars. On the left are the brothers unloading the donkey of the
empty meal-jars, now to be filled through Joseph's kindness. In the
centre is Joseph making himself known to his eleven brethren. He is
gazing tenderly on little Benjamin, who advances towards him in the
foreground. "And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph: doth my
father yet live?" (Genesis xlv. 3). On the right are seen the brethren
departing homeward, and the mule laden with Benjamin and the filled
meal-bags is being driven off.


1220. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD

  _L' Ingegno_ (Umbrian: painted 1484-1511).

      This is the only picture, says the Official Catalogue, which
      can be authenticated "with something like certainty" as the
      work of Andrea di Luigi, of Assisi. His name occurs in receipts
      and registers from 1505 to 1511, in the capacity of procurator,
      arbitrator, auditor to the magistracy, and finally of papal
      cashier at Assisi. It was perhaps this "talent" for affairs
      that won him the name of "L' Ingegno." Vasari says he was the
      most promising disciple of Perugino, and the resemblance to
      that artist in this picture is strong. Compare for instance
      even so small a thing as the dress patterns here with those in
      288, as also the close resemblance to the "purist" landscape
      there described.


1221. "DARBY AND JOAN."

  _Abraham de Pape_ (Dutch: died 1666).

      This painter, a friend and pupil of Gerard Dou, was a
      well-to-do citizen of Leyden. He was twice Dean of the
      Painters' Guild in that place. This picture (formerly in the
      Blenheim Collection) is considered one of the best of his
      works. The painter's name is inscribed on the wooden cupboard
      on the wall above the spinning-wheel.


1222. A STUDY OF FOLIAGE, BIRDS, ETC.

  _Melchior de Hondecoeter_ (Dutch: 1636-1695). _See 202._

Formerly ascribed to Otto Marseus; but the defaced part of the
signature has recently been deciphered as being that of Hondecoeter,
dated 1668.


1227. VIRGIN AND CHILD

  _Marcello Venusti_ (Florentine: 1515-1579). _See 1194._

Also St. Joseph and St. John the Baptist, with the skin of a wild beast
quaintly treated as a head-dress. A picture from a composition by
Michael Angelo, known as "Il Silenzio."


1229. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Luis de Morales_ (Spanish: 1509-1586).

      Luis de Morales was born at Badajos, and is one of the most
      native of Spanish artists. He did not resort to Italy, such
      foreign influence as is discernible in him being rather that of
      the Flemings; and the religious sanctity of his work won him
      the surname of "the Divine." "His subjects, always devotional,
      were," we are told, "mostly of the saddest, as the Saviour in
      his hour of suffering, or dead in his mother's arms, or the
      weeping Madonna. His object was to excite devotion through
      images of pain, and to this end the forms are attenuated and
      the faces disfigured by the marks of past or present anguish."
      He was very largely commissioned by churches and convents,
      and his fame spread over Spain. He was called to the court of
      Philip II. in 1563, but was dismissed as soon as he had painted
      one picture, and thereafter he fell into great poverty. He
      had appeared at court, it is said, "in the style of a grand
      _seigneur_" which seemed to the king and his courtiers absurd
      in a mere painter, and was the cause of their disfavour. Some
      years later, however, the king, learning of his poverty,
      granted him a pension. In his earlier period, Morales painted
      crowded compositions with numerous figures; in his later,
      smaller pictures, such as the one before us.


1230. PORTRAIT OF A GIRL.

  _Domenico Ghirlandajo_ (Florentine: 1449-1494).

      The name of Ghirlandajo is one of the great landmarks in the
      history of Florentine art. He was the first to introduce
      portraits into "historical" pictures for their own sake, and
      his series of frescoes in S. Maria Novella is particularly
      interesting for the numerous portraits of his friends and
      patrons, dressed in the costume of the period and introduced
      into scenes of Florentine life and architecture. "There is a
      bishop," says Vasari, "in his episcopal vestments and with
      spectacles on his nose"--Ghirlandajo was the first master who
      ventured to paint a figure wearing spectacles--"he is chanting
      the prayers for the dead; and the fact that we do not hear
      him alone demonstrates to us that he is not alive, but merely
      painted." These groups of men and women in Ghirlandajo's
      sacred compositions stand by in the costume of their day as
      spectators of the incidents represented. He introduced also the
      architecture of Florence in the richest display and in complete
      perspective; and thus in his subjects taken from sacred story
      he has left us "an exalted picture of life as it presented
      itself to him in that day." "In the technical management of
      fresco Ghirlandajo exhibits an unsurpassed finish, and worked
      in it with extraordinary facility. He is said to have expressed
      a wish that he might be allowed to paint in fresco the whole
      of the walls which enclosed the city of Florence." He was
      carried off by the plague in his forty-fifth year, but he had
      already completed a very large body of work. He was the son of
      a silk-broker named Bigordi. He and his brother David, who was
      also a painter, were apprenticed to a goldsmith. Their master
      probably manufactured the garlands of gold and silver which
      were so much in favour with the women of Florence, and the
      young men coming from his shop thus acquired the name of _del
      Ghirlandajo_. Domenico early showed his bent by the striking
      likenesses he drew of the people who passed by the goldsmith's
      shop. He remained to the end of his life, says Ruskin, "a
      goldsmith with a gift of portraiture." As early as 1475 his
      reputation was established, for in that year he was called to
      Rome to paint in the Sistine Chapel, where his "Calling of
      Peter and Andrew" is still well preserved. Among the frescoes
      executed after his return to Florence may be mentioned the "St.
      Jerome" in the church of the Ognissanti, the history of "St.
      Francis" in the Trinita, and the famous series in the choir of
      S. Maria Novella. Copies from several of these works may be
      seen in the Arundel Society's Collection. They are described by
      Ruskin in his _Mornings in Florence_ (see also _Praeterita_,
      vol. ii., and numerous incidental references in _Modern
      Painters_). Ghirlandajo had not, perhaps, Giotto's dramatic
      instinct for the heart of his subjects, but his frescoes are
      remarkable, not only for their brilliantly decorative effect,
      but for their noble and dignified realism. In the Uffizi at
      Florence are his best easel pictures. There is also a fine
      "Visitation" in the Louvre. Ghirlandajo was celebrated further
      as a worker in mosaic (_e.g._ the mosaic over the north door of
      the Cathedral at Florence). He was twice married. The painter
      Ridolfo (1143) was a son by his first wife. Amongst his other
      pupils were Granacci and Michael Angelo.

The girl is of the same type--with the same hair, "yellow as ripe
corn," and the same dainty primness--as the lady in Mr. Willett's
picture (for some years on loan in the National Gallery, and now in
the collection of M. Rodolphe Kann at Paris), but she was perhaps of
humbler station--a simple flower in her hair and a coral necklace being
her only ornaments.


1231. PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN.

  _Sir Antonio More_ (Flemish: 1512-1578). _See 1094._

"A man in the prime of life, attributed to Sir Antonio Moro; the
signature is perhaps apocryphal. There is little doubt, however, that
the attribution is correct; the manipulation shows all the prodigious
power of Moro. His capacity for seizing character and the fine tone of
his flesh colour are all here. The execution suggests the brilliant
study of Hubert Goltzius, by Moro, in the Brussels Gallery. That
masterpiece was stated to have been painted in an hour; the present
head bears every indication of almost equally rapid brush work"
(_Times_, September 19, 1887).


1232. PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN.

  _Heinrich Aldegrever_ (Westphalian: about 1502-1555).

      "Aldegrever is a son of the Renaissance, but he has not
      altogether escaped the old Franconian stiffness and
      provincialism.... His real strength is in engraving.... He
      worked also as a goldsmith, and his ornamental designs are
      numerous. We also know of a small number of woodcuts by him"
      (_Woltmann_, ii. 234). His pictures are very rare. The flower
      and ring which figure in the best known portrait by him at
      Vienna are again met with here, but this picture is less stiff
      and formal than that.


1233. THE BLOOD OF THE REDEEMER.

  _Giovanni Bellini_ (Venetian: 1426-1516). _See 189._

A devotional picture recalling such reminiscences of mediæval mysticism
as are found in many of our hymns--

    Come let us stand beneath his Cross:
      So may the blood from out his side
    Fall gently on us drop by drop.
      Jesus our Lord is crucified.

"A cold sky with underlit clouds suggests the still and solemn hour
of early dawn, a fitting time for the advent of this weird and
livid apparition. Gaunt, bloodless, and with attenuated limbs, the
Redeemer, we recognise, has passed through the Valley of 'the Shadow
of Death'--not victoriously; there is no light of triumph in the
lustreless eyes; no palm nor crown awaits this victim of relentless
hate, the type of infinite despair and eternal sacrifice" (_Times_,
September 19, 1887)--

    Sunrise is close: the upper sky is blue
    That has been darkness; and the day is new,
    Bleaching yon little town: where the white hue,
      Spread blank on the horizon, skirts
    The night-mass there is strife and wavy rush
        Of beams in flush....
    The dawn is blue among the hills and white
    Above their tops; a gladness creeps in sight
    Across the silver-russet slopes, but night
      Obscures the mortal ebb and flow
    Flushing Thy veins; Thy lips in strife for breath
          Are full of death.

  ("Michael Field" in _Sight and Song_.)

The looks and gestures of the Saviour seem to demonstrate that
the blood which pours from His riven side is freely given for the
redemption of the world. In the details of the picture, which careless
observers might mistake for mere chance accessories, there is an
allegorical meaning. The paved terrace with the open doorway symbolises
the Paradise regained by the Blood of the Sacrificed, the ideal
Church, the Church of the New Covenant, in contradistinction to the
Hortus Inclusus, the garden enclosed, without a door, which was the
type of the Old Covenant. The antique reliefs are pagan prototypes of
the Christian sacrifice. On the right is Mucius Scaevola, before Lars
Porsena, thrusting his hand into the fire,--the ancient type of heroism
and readiness to suffer; on the opposite side is a pagan sacrifice,
with Pan playing the pipes, signifying the propitiatory sacrifices of
the ancients, and thus foreshadowing the Sacrifice on the Cross. The
landscape background carries out the same ideas. On the right is a
barren hill with leafless trees, and at its base some ancient ruins
and a crumbling fountain. In contrast to this on the opposite side is
a prosperous and well-fortified city, lying amid meadows; a church
tower; the sky above is rosy with the light of early dawn. Figures are
seen turning from the ancient ruins and making their way along the path
which leads to a new and better home, the Christian city (Richter's
_Lectures on the National Gallery_, p. 37).

This little picture is among the earliest of Bellini's works. The
abnormal length of the figure of Christ and the exaggerated length and
straightness of the forearms are points which should be noticed in
this connection, resembling as they do characteristics of other early
works by the painter, and also the drawings of his father, Jacopo. But
"already, in spite of the archaism of form, he shows a feeling for
atmospheric tonality; the ruin to the right and the two figures near it
are, as painters say, in their place; that is to say, the treatment as
regards relations of tone is such as the linear perspective would lead
us to expect. Still more surprising is the way in which the eye is led
down the valley to free spaces of luminous air" (Roger Fry: _Giovanni
Bellini_, p. 18). The subject is a rare one in Italian art. Mr. Fry
gives a reproduction of a similar figure in a picture by Crivelli in
the Poldi Pezzoli Collection at Milan; and Dr. Richter, one from a
woodcut in Savonarola's treatise on "Humility," first printed in 1492.


1234. "A MUSE INSPIRING A COURT POET."

  _Dosso Dossi_ (Ferrarese: 1479-1542). _See 640._

Called a "court poet" because, one may suppose, of his sleek and
uninspired appearance; but poets do not always look their parts, and
'tis the function of the Muse "to mould the secret gold." But perhaps
the artist had some gently sarcastic intention, for it is but a small
sprig that the Muse has spared to the poet from her garland. The head
of the poet is clearly a portrait. That of the Muse "is as fine in
technique and condition as anything in the whole range of Dossi's work"
(Benson).


1239, 1240. THE MURDER OF THE INNOCENTS.

  _Girolamo Mocetto_ (Venetian: worked 1484-1514).

      Mocetto was a native of Verona, but a pupil of Giovanni Bellini
      at Venice. He was "one of the earliest," says Lanzi (ii. 167),
      "and least polished among Bellini's disciples." And it is
      interesting to contrast the accomplished and beautiful work of
      the master (1233) with the almost ludicrous imperfections of
      these two pictures by the pupil. Notice especially the absurd
      attitude of the attendant to the left, in 1239; and in 1240,
      the expression of grief in the mother. Mocetto's claim to
      distinction rests rather on his rare engravings, executed from
      the designs of Giovanni Bellini and Mantegna. He "was also the
      painter of the great window in the church of SS. Giovanni e
      Paolo (Venice), which, although badly restored, still remains
      a magnificent work" (Layard, i. 332).

These works probably formed the wings of a triptych. In the former
scene Herod directs the massacre which has already begun; in the
second, the massacre is at its height.


1241. CHRIST PREACHING IN THE TEMPLE.

  _Pedro Campaña_ (Flemish-Italian: 1503-1580).

      The painter of this picture forms an interesting link in the
      history of art. "In Spain the influence exercised over the
      national school by the northern Gothic masters was weakened
      at an early stage by the Italian Renaissance. Strange to say,
      a Fleming, who had learned his art in the school of Michael
      Angelo, was the chief instrument by which Italy asserted her
      power. Peter de Kampencer, to whom the Spaniards gave the
      name of Pedro Campaña, was born in Brussels. He left Italy,
      where he had enjoyed the protection of Cardinal Grimani, for
      Seville (1548), where he founded an academy." Luis de Morales
      (see 1229) is said to have been among his disciples. One of
      his masterpieces, a "Descent from the Cross," in Santa Cruz,
      was the picture which Murillo was never tired of admiring (see
      the story told under 13). Besides such large altar-pieces,
      "he was accustomed," says Lanzi (i. 402, Bohn's edition), "to
      paint small pictures, which were eagerly sought after by the
      English, and transferred to their country, where they were
      highly prized." In 1560 Campaña returned to his native city,
      and became official painter to the tapestry works there.

The subject of this "celebrated picture" (as Lanzi calls it) is "The
Magdalen led by St. Martha to the Temple, to hear the preaching of
Christ." Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, is identified in
legend with the Magdalen, and her conversion is said to have begun with
the incident here depicted. The kneeling figure of the Magdalen is
conspicuous amongst the women listeners; she is encouraged by Martha,
who points to the preacher (see Mrs. Jameson's _Sacred and Legendary
Art_, p. 219, ed. 1850, for other representations of this subject).


1243. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.

  _C. W. Heimbach_ (German: 1613-1678).

Dated 1662. Notice the characteristic "steeple-crowned" hat.


1247. THE CARD PLAYERS.

  _Nicolas Maes_ (Dutch: 1632-1693). _See 153._

This picture, purchased in 1888 at the sale of the Gatton Park
(Lord Oxenbridge's) Collection, was stated by the auctioneer to be
by Rembrandt, but there is little doubt that it is really by his
disciple, Maes; though, as it is larger than most of the known works
by that master, other critics have ascribed it to another pupil of
Rembrandt, Carl Faber, or Fabricius. "In any case it is unmistakably
of the Rembrandt school, and owes its inspiration to the method of
presentation peculiar to the master. From every technical point of
view it is first-rate. It is infused with the largeness of style, the
just appreciation of character, and the glowing colour, to be found
in Rembrandt's matured works. It is the turn of the girl to play. She
regards her hand in evident perplexity, doubtful which card to throw
down. The man is apparently sure of his game" (_Times_, June 4, 1888).


1248. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Bartholomeus van der Helst_ (Dutch: 1611-1670). _See 140._

The sitter belonged to the Braganza family. So prematurely demure
is this plain little girl that, in spite of the fact that her hair
is "down" and that she wears a round nursery cap, she is dignified
with the title of "A Lady." She is certainly every inch a grown-up
lady in her rich brocade dress, pearl necklace, and costly feathers.
Van der Helst gave special attention, says Sir F. Burton, to "the
discrimination of stuffs, and his skill in reproducing the lustre
and shimmer of jewellery or gold embroidery and the delicacy of the
lace-worker's art has never been equalled." The picture is signed, and
dated 1645.


1251. PORTRAIT OF A MAN.

  _Frans Hals_ (Dutch: 1580-1666). _See 1021._

It is only at Haarlem that the full power of Hals can be seen; but this
picture shows something of his dash and facility. There is, indeed,
upon it a stamp of power and individuality, alike in conception and
treatment, which makes it one of the most interesting portraits in the
Gallery. It is signed with the painter's monogram, and dated 1633.
Possibly it is a portrait of the painter himself; and certainly it
shows the type of a man to which Hals belonged--Hals, the dashing
volunteer who fought in the military guilds, the good-for-nothing,
daredevil fellow who loved his glass and was none too faithful in his
domestic relations, whose excesses brought him finally to penury,
but whose high spirit and unfailing dash enabled him to remain true,
through it all, to the calling of his art.


1252. A FRUIT-PIECE.

  _Frans Snyders_ (Flemish: 1579-1657).

      Snyders was one of the principal Flemish painters of animals
      and still life, and his talents were so much admired by Rubens
      that the latter often employed him to paint fruit, game, and
      other accessories in his pictures. Rubens in exchange sometimes
      drew the figures in pictures by Snyders, whom, as a last proof
      of affection, he appointed by will to manage the sale of his
      works of art. Snyders received many commissions, too, from the
      Archduke Albert and from Philip III. of Spain. His earlier
      pictures were confined to representations--such as this one
      of fruit and vegetables, or of dead game and fish. In the
      establishment of his parents, who were proprietors of a large
      eating-house, he had ample opportunity of studying such models.
      "Snyders is not to be surpassed," says Sir F. Burton, "in
      the painting of fruit. With his fine appreciation of colour,
      and his large method of handling, he reproduced with few but
      masterly touches the characteristic surface of each luscious
      product of the garden, with greater truth to nature than was
      generally attained by those painters who sought it by means of
      minute and laborious imitation." Afterwards Snyders enlarged
      his scope, and produced those scenes of the chase for which he
      became celebrated. The vigour which Snyders threw into these
      productions is extraordinary, but pictures of animals in savage
      chase or butchered agony do not appeal to all tastes. "I know
      no pictures," says Ruskin, "more shameful to humanity than the
      boar and lion hunts of Rubens and Snyders, signs of disgrace
      all the deeper because the powers desecrated are so great. The
      painter of the village ale-house sign may, not dishonourably,
      paint the fox-hunt for the village squire; but the occupation
      of magnificent art power in giving semblance of perpetuity to
      those bodily pangs which Nature has mercifully ordained to
      be transient, and in forcing us, by the fascination of its
      stormy skill, to dwell on that from which eyes of merciful
      men should instinctively turn away, and eyes of high-minded
      men scornfully, is dishonourable alike in the power which it
      degrades, and the joy to which it betrays" (_Modern Painters_,
      vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 19).


1255. A STUDY OF STILL LIFE.

  _Jan Jans van de Velde_ (Dutch: born 1622).

      This rare painter, perhaps the son of Jan van de Velde, the
      engraver, was settled at Amsterdam in 1642. Besides being a
      painter he was in business as a broker, and was described in
      the marriage register as a silver-wire drawer. This picture is
      dated 1656.


1256. A STUDY OF STILL LIFE.

  _Herman Steenwyck_ (Dutch: 17th Century).

      This Steenwyck is not to be confused with the painter of
      architectural interiors (see 1132). Herman, and a brother,
      Pieter, were painters of still-life subjects at Leyden.


1257. THE BIRTH OF THE VIRGIN.

  _Murillo_ (Spanish: 1618-1682). _See 13._

A sketch for the large picture now in the Louvre (No. 540). "Like so
many of the sketches of Murillo, it is so light in touch," says one
of the critics, "so exquisite in colour, as to be, from an artistic
point of view, preferable to the finished picture." This, however, is
not the only advantage which Murillo gains from smallness of scale.
There is a prettiness, and even a sentimentality, permissible on a
small scale which offends the dignity of a large canvas. Thus, the
"affectation" of the attendant angels is far less "absurd" here than in
the large picture. "One of the cherubs shrinks back," adds Mr. Eastlake
in his Louvre catalogue, "frightened at a dog, which seems a strangely
human act of weakness; another holds up a piece of baby-linen, with a
provokingly fantastic air." But herein we have the very characteristics
which make the religious sentiment of Murillo's pictures interesting.
In the early Italian pictures the Virgin is a great lady, living in a
fine house or spacious cloister. But in Spain the symbols of devotion
passed into realities; and a combination of mysticism in conception
with realism in treatment is the distinguishing "note" of the Spanish
religious school. One could not wish for a prettier presentment of this
mingled note than is afforded by this little sketch, with its angels
half in ecstatic adoration over the "Lily of Eden," and half in human
playfulness--a sketch which seems to combine with the frank realities
of a humble nursery the religious sentiment of Keble's _Christian
Year_:--

    Ave Maria! blessed maid!
    Lily of Eden's fragrant shade,
      Who can express the love
    That nurtured thee so pure and sweet,
    Making thy heart a shelter meet
      For Jesus' Holy Dove!


1258. A STUDY OF STILL LIFE

  _J. B. S. Chardin_ (French: 1699-1779).

      Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin was the contemporary of Boucher
      (1090), and his pictures may serve to remind us that there was
      a _bourgeoisie_ in France as well as a _noblesse_ when Louis
      XV. was king. The simple subject of this picture--a loaf of
      brown bread, with a bottle of wine, spread out on a piece of
      old newspaper--takes us far away from the luxurious trifling
      of the Court painters. Chardin followed the path of frank
      realism, treating, however, all his subjects with refinement.
      To Dutch precision he added Gallic grace. He painted either
      still life (as here) or scenes from the domestic life of the
      people (as in 1664, and in a picture in the Dulwich Gallery).
      His treatment was devoid of affectation, and his colouring
      fresh and agreeable. "He is the best colourist in the Salon,"
      said Diderot of him in his lifetime. Chardin, in the exercise
      of his honest industry, knew how difficult it was to excel,
      and said on one occasion to Diderot and the other critics,
      "Gently, good sirs, gently! Out of all the pictures that are
      here seek the very worst; and know that two thousand unhappy
      wretches have bitten their brushes in two with their teeth, in
      despair of ever doing even so badly." Chardin's fellow-workers
      appreciated his merits, and he was elected a member of the
      Academy in 1728, becoming Treasurer of that body in 1755. There
      is a large collection of his works in the Louvre. They fell
      into disrepute during the succeeding reign of David and the
      "classical" school, but they have again won a high position
      in the estimation of those who know. This picture (which is
      signed, and dated 1754) was presented to the Gallery; for No.
      1664, purchased in 1898, the sum of £721 was paid.

Chardin's pictures show that instinctive "power of reticence" which is
one of the secrets of fine art. "It is what gives value to such humble
efforts as the study of still-life subjects, and raises them--as in
the works of the French painters, Chardin especially, and of some of
the Dutch painters--above the level of mere mechanical imitations,
and transforms them into works capable of giving us real pleasure"
(Poynter's _Lectures on Art_, p. 195).


1260-1270. EARLY GREEK PORTRAITS.

These eleven portraits are part of the find by Mr. Flinders Petrie, in
his excavations at Hawara, in the Fayoum (Middle Egypt), and are of
great interest as supplying a fresh link in the historical development
of art as exhibited in the National Gallery. Here is portraiture in
its infancy. But even these portraits, done probably by Græco-Egyptian
artists in the second or third century A.D., are later developments
from an earlier stage. They were affixed to the outside covering of
mummies in a position corresponding to the head of the corpse:[237] the
exact arrangement can be seen in two mummies from the same "find," now
in the British Museum. "They are derived," says Miss Amelia B. Edwards,
"by a clearly traced process of evolution from the portrait-heads
first modelled in stucco upon Egyptian mummy cases, and then painted.
From coloured portraiture in high relief to coloured portraiture on
flexible canvas, where a certain amount of relief was obtained by
the prominence of the bandaged face beneath, was one step; and from
the flexible canvas to the panel upon which the semblance of relief
was given by light and shadow and foreshortening was another and
far more important step. It marked the transition from the Eastern
to the Western school of painting." The portraits are painted with
pigments of rich colour on thin panels of cedar wood, wax being the
medium employed. "The rather lumpy surface or _impasto_ which comes
from the use of a wax medium is very obvious. The melted wax rapidly
hardened when the brush touched the cold surface of the panel, and so
prevented the pigment from being laid in a smooth, even manner. The
wood was not, like stucco, sufficiently absorbent for the subsequent
application of heat to get rid of the lumpy surface by driving the
superfluous wax below the surface" (Middleton's _Remains of Ancient
Rome_, i. 100). The persons buried with these panel portraits were
mostly of Greek origin; but some--as, for instance, the man (No. 1265,
presented by Mr. Haworth)--seemed rather to be of the Roman type.
The faces exhibit all variations, from living grace to the emptiest
vacuity. It has been suggested that "the better portraits were painted
from the life, whilst in other cases the painter was perhaps only
sent for after death, and this may account for the vague and lifeless
looks of many of the portraits, inanimate in spite of the wide,
open, and vacuous smile." It will be noticed that "the style of the
portraits is usually conventional precisely in those details which
make the difference between one living face and another. The eyes,
which more than any other feature should impart the living expression
in all these cases, are executed in a perfunctory and formal manner.
And they are, moreover, in many cases too large for the face. This
is not merely due to the inability of the artists, for many of these
portraits show a real grasp of character and a distinct technical
skill in the modelling, notably in that, perhaps, most difficult
of tasks, the indication of the play of muscles around the mouth.
Under these circumstances I think no one will deny that the measure
of success achieved in some of the best of these portraits is very
remarkable. The old man in particular (1265) shows a breadth of style
and a quiet humour which reminds us of some of the Dutch masters of
the Teniers school. Of course there are good and bad among them;
the quality probably depended to some extent upon the price which
the relative could afford to pay. One wonders what the price may
have been, especially when we read of the enormous sums which great
pictures fetched in the palmy days of Greek painting. Most of these
people seem to have been well to do, as the gold wreaths of the men
and the jewellery of the women prove" (Cecil Smith, ch. vi. of W. M.
F. Petrie's _Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoe_: 1889). No. 1261 retains the
greater part of a gilt gesso border, stamped or modelled with a wavy
tendril and bud pattern.


1277. A MAN'S PORTRAIT.

  _Nicolas Maes_ (Dutch: 1632-1693). _See 153._

Signed, and dated 1666. A singularly lifelike portrait of a singularly
unattractive face.


1278. A CONVIVIAL PARTY.

  _Hendrik Gerritsz Pot_ (Dutch: about 1600-1656).

      The picture is signed HP (on the side of the projecting
      chimney). Several pictures--chiefly conversation-pieces and
      portraits (including one of Charles I. in the Louvre)--bear
      these initials. They are supposed to belong to the above-named
      artist, of whom it is recorded that he visited England and made
      portraits of the king.

An ordinary scene of the kind, but there is a pleasant touch in the
little dog who furtively licks the hand of its half-tipsy master.


1280. CHRIST APPEARING AFTER HIS RESURRECTION

  _Unknown_ (Early Flemish: 15th Century).

The Virgin Mary sits on the edge of an old-fashioned bedstead. Christ,
with the marks of the wounds in breast and feet, faces her, and behind
him is a great company of saints, kneeling. Highly finished throughout.


1282. SAN ZENOBIO RESTORING TO LIFE A DEAD CHILD.

  _Jacopo Chimenti da Empoli_ (Florentine: 1554-1640).

      Chimenti, of Empoli, near Florence, was "an imitator of
      Andrea del Sarto, and distinguished for his Madonnas; he was
      distinguished also for his love of good eating, and acquired
      from his contemporaries the nickname of _L' Empilo_, instead of
      L' Empoli, which is as much as to say stewpan" (Wornum, _Epochs
      of Painting_, p. 356). He was largely employed in the churches
      of Florence and the neighbourhood. His best production is his
      "St. Ives" in the Uffizi: "in noble conception and truth and
      glow of colour it reminds us of the best of the old Florentine
      masters."

St. Zenobio (died A.D. 417) was a Bishop of Florence, famous in his
time for his eloquence and good works, and a favourite saint with
the Florentines in after ages. The following is the legend painted in
this picture:--"A French lady of noble lineage, who was performing a
pilgrimage to Rome, stopped at Florence on the way, in order to see
the good bishop Zenobio, of whom she had heard so much, and having
received his blessing she proceeded to Rome, leaving in his care her
little son. The day before her return to Florence, the child died. She
was overwhelmed with grief, and took the child and laid him down at
the feet of St. Zenobio, who, by the efficacy of his prayers, restored
the child to life, and gave him back to the arms of his mother" (Mrs.
Jameson, _Sacred and Legendary Art_, p. 415).


1284. ST. FRANCIS AND ST. MARK.

  _Antonio Vivarini_ (Venetian: died 1470). _See 768._

A companion panel to the one already in the Gallery; see 768. The
design of the pedestal is, it will be seen, the same in both.


1285. PORTRAIT OF NAPOLEON I.

  _Horace Vernet_ (French: 1789-1863).

      Emile John Horace Vernet, soldier and artist, was the
      grandson of Claude Joseph Vernet (236). He was decorated in
      1814 by Napoleon for his gallant conduct before the enemy
      at the Barrière de Clichy, on which occasion he served in a
      regiment of hussars. In the Louvre there is a picture by him
      representing the defence of Paris on that occasion. On the fall
      of the Empire he left France for a time, but he gradually won
      the favour of the court. In 1833 he joined the French army at
      Algiers, and there gathered material for the huge battle-pieces
      which he painted for Louis Philippe. The Crimean War furnished
      him with another congenial set of subjects. His work had a
      great vogue in its day, but owed more to its patriotic and
      stirring subject-matter than to abiding artistic qualities.

Less ideal than the beautiful sketch which David made of Napoleon
as First Consul, or the later conventional pictures painted for
a generation which had not seen the original. There is no dreamy
intensity in the eyes, and no engaging smile. The famous lock in the
centre of the forehead is there, and the face is still handsome,
imposing, and resolute; but there is already something of the heaviness
which presaged his fall.


1286. A BOY DRINKING.

  _Murillo_ (Spanish: 1618-1682). _See 13._

"The boy is resting his left arm on a table and holding a square
bottle, like one of those used for schiedam. The head is finely
modelled, with a firm, broad touch; the bright eyes are deep set under
the brow, and they betray eager delight in the draught he is taking.
The flesh tones are unusually pure and bright for Murillo. The picture
seems to be that which, named 'A Spanish Youth Drinking,' was sold in
1836 with Lord Charles Townshend's collection for £414. With the Earl
of Clare's pictures was sold, in 1864, 'A Peasant holding a Bottle and
drinking from a Glass,' which had belonged to Prince Talleyrand and
Lord C. Townshend,' for £1365" (_Athenæum_).


1287. INTERIOR OF AN ART GALLERY.

  _Dutch School_ (17th Century).

Of interest alike for its technical skill and for its historical
information. No less than forty-two pictures hang upon the walls
of the "Art Gallery," and the collection is very interesting as
showing the taste of an amateur of the period. In addition to these,
there are globes, gems, maps, engravings, nautical instruments,
pieces of sculpture, and other "objects of vertu"--all painted with
miniature-like delicacy. Especially charming is an elaborately inlaid
cabinet with china and other "curios" upon it. Notice also the fine
Persian carpet. The art treasures are being eagerly scanned by several
groups of connoisseurs, whilst--with a touch, perhaps, of satiric
intent--a monkey is perched on the window-sill, criticising the
critics. It is interesting to note that with only three exceptions all
the paintings depicted in the Art Gallery are in black frames. This
was the common practice with the Low Country painters. Several of the
latest additions to the Dutch pictures in the Gallery are in their
original black frames. The famous Teniers at Vienna of "The Archduke's
Gallery" is an equally apt illustration of the taste of Dutch and
Flemish painters (_Athenæum_, 2nd January 1892).


1288. FROST SCENE.

  _Aart van der Neer_ (Dutch: 1619-1692). _See 152._


1289. LANDSCAPE WITH CATTLE.

  _Cuyp_ (Dutch: 1620-1691). _See 53._

A characteristic little work. In the distance is a ruined castle-keep
in the water, which may be the same building as that depicted in No.
824.


1291. THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN.

  _Juan de Valdes Leal_ (Spanish: 1630-1691).

      Valdes Leal, who was born at Cordova, settled afterwards at
      Seville, where he became the first President of the Academy
      in that city. It is to him that some critics have assigned
      the "Dead Orlando" in this room (741). His most famous
      picture--"one of the most repulsive, but also most impressive
      ever painted," says Mr. W. B. Scott--is "The Two Dead Men,"
      in the Hospital of Charity at Seville, representing a charnel
      house with the partially-decayed corpses of a bishop and a
      noble. So dreadful is the realism that Murillo said he never
      could approach the picture without fancying he smelt the
      horror. "Ah, my compeer," replied the flattered realist, "it
      is not my fault; you have taken all the sweet fruit out of the
      basket and left only the rotten."

In the present picture Valdes Leal has picked sweet fruit too;
indeed it is over sweet. The donatrix of the picture and her son
are shown in either corner, while in the midst the Virgin ascends
to Heaven, surrounded by bands of angels. The picture is thoroughly
characteristic, in its florid type of sentiment, of the Spanish school.


1292. A FAMILY GROUP.

  _Jan van Bylert_ (Dutch: 1603-1671).

      A painter of Utrecht; entered the Guild of Painters there in
      1630, and repeatedly filled the office of its Dean. Studied at
      Utrecht under A. Bloemaert, and afterwards visited Italy and
      France. His works are numerous in the galleries of Amsterdam
      and Utrecht.

They are plain old people, truth to tell, this group of two Dutch
housewives and a Dutch burgher, and they are somewhat too obviously
sitting for their portraits. How prim and neat all the surroundings
are! how pretty is the trailing rose on the balustrade! and with what
quiet, unobtrusive fidelity the whole picture is painted!


1293. MUSICAL PASTIME.

  _Jan Miense Molenaer_ (Dutch: died 1668).

      This painter, the best of three artists of the same name,
      "excelled in representing peasant interiors and scenes of
      rustic life in a quiet style and in skilfully graduated tints.
      His colouring is warm and clear; his drawing spirited, and
      his touch full of life. Besides this, he possessed a certain
      refinement, and his humour never overstepped the bounds of
      decency. While his works retain characteristics peculiar to
      him, they manifest also something of the styles of Steen,
      Brauwer, and Ostade" (Havard: _The Dutch School_, p. 159). He
      was a native of Haarlem, and afterwards settled in Amsterdam.
      His earlier works (such as the present picture) suggest the
      tutelage of Frans Hals; the later works show the influence of
      Rembrandt.

This picture (which is signed on the side of the foot-warmer) is a
capital example of the artist. "The fair faces of the singers are very
spontaneously expressive of their gaiety, and have something of the
animation of Jan Steen without his vulgar types and occasional grimace."


1294. AN ALLEGORICAL SUBJECT.

  _William van de Poorter_ (Dutch: painted 1630-1645).

      This painter was a native of Haarlem, where he belonged to
      the Guild of Painters, and was a pupil of Rembrandt. In this
      picture the light, coming from the top on our left, falls on
      the globe and figure with Rembrandtesque effect.

The subject is perhaps a "Vigil of Arms," and may depict a knight or
king passing the night before his investiture in the seclusion of
a private chapel. On the altar before which he stands are a globe,
two crowns, and several documents. His left hand is turned slightly
forward, as if to call attention to the action, while in his right hand
he holds a sceptre with its point resting on the globe. On the floor in
front of the altar lie his arms and armour; behind, hangs his banner.
On his head is a laurel wreath; and over a bright breastplate he wears
the richly embroidered robe of his order.


1295. MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH SAINTS.

  _Girolamo Giovenone_ (Lombard: early 16th Century).

      Giovenone was a native of Vercelli, in which city several fine
      pictures by him are preserved. Other painters who worked, or
      were born, at Vercelli are Macrino d' Alba (1200), Lanini
      (700), and Gaudenzio Ferrari (1465). By some critics our
      picture is assigned to another painter of the same school,
      Defendente Ferrari (see Catalogue of the Burlington Fine Arts
      Club's Exhibition, 1898, p. lxxix.). Examples of both painters
      may be seen in the Turin Gallery.

The Virgin and Child are flanked by the kneeling figures of two men,
perhaps brothers, who were doubtless the donors of the picture. Behind
each of them stands his patron saint, patting the devotee approvingly
on the back. The Virgin's face is charming; so also are two little
angels, who are quaintly perched up aloft, one on either side sitting
on ledges of the canopied throne. The picture is a good example of
symmetry--almost exaggerated, one may think--in composition.


1296, 1297. LANDSCAPES.

  _Giuseppe Zais_ (Venetian: died 1784).

      Zais, a Venetian, was a pupil of the Florentine landscape and
      decorative painter Zuccarelli (1702-1788) who settled for many
      years at Venice. Zuccarelli in 1752 came to this country, where
      in 1768 he became an original member of the Royal Academy.
      The works of Zais also for a time attracted the attention of
      English amateurs, but he died a pauper in the hospital of
      Treviso.

Amusing examples of the so-called "pastoral landscape," which found
favour in the last century--the landscape painted "in praise of
the country by men who lived in coffee-houses." Zais was nearly
contemporary with Longhi, and shows us the same Venetians in
_villeggiatura_ whom Longhi shows us in town (see 1100 and 1101). In
1286 we see some "picturesque" farm-buildings on one side of a stream,
with a "picturesque" cow-herd asleep; whilst on the other side is a
party of gay ladies--dressed in crinolines and bows, and devoid of
hats, shawls, or wraps--flirting with _beaux_. The companion picture
(1297) is conceived in the same style; but the ladies are here fishing,
though, to judge from the amateurishness of their proceeding, they are
not likely to catch fish.


1298. LANDSCAPE: RIVER SCENE.

  _Joachim Patinir_ (Early Flemish: died 1524). _See 715._

This picture, acquired in Florence in 1889 together with two by Zais
(1296, 1297), was for some years attributed to the Venetian school.
It is now recognised as a work of Patinir. The heavy blue tone of
that painter's distances here gives way to a lighter colour; but the
fantastic landscape has strong resemblances to No. 716. If by Patinir,
the work is unique in being one of pure landscape, with no scriptural
incident. "The earliest independent landscape that we possess by an old
master, the first admission that inanimate nature pure and simple is
worth making a picture of. In the left corner is the artist sketching,
which is a sort of guarantee that he worked in the open air, and that
he had been struck with the beauty of some such prospect.... He has
been so used to regard landscape as an accessory that he does not dare
to paint it except from a distance, or on any but a minute scale,
and he enlivens it with signs of human industry in the raft and the
limekiln. It is as though a landscape had stepped out of the background
of some old picture, and asserted its independence with fear and
trembling" (Monkhouse: _In the National Gallery_, p. 202).


1299. PORTRAIT OF A YOUTH.

  _Domenico Ghirlandajo_ (Florentine: 1449-1494). _See 1230._

It is interesting to compare this portrait with Botticelli's of
a somewhat similar subject (No. 626). Both were probably "good
likenesses"; but Ghirlandajo's is less forcible and impressive than
Botticelli's.


1300. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Unknown_ (Milanese School: 15th-16th Century).

Apparently by a follower of Leonardo.


1301. PORTRAIT OF SAVONAROLA.

  _Unknown_ (Florentine: 15th Century).

A portrait of the great patriot-priest of Florence (1452-1498), whose
strange career is familiar to all readers of George Eliot's _Romola_.
Ultimately he was condemned to death, with his two disciples; and on
the back of the portrait is a representation of their execution. They
were hung on a cross, and burnt.


1302. THE SOUL OF ST. BERTIN.


1303. A CHOIR OF ANGELS.

  _Simon Marmion_ (French: 1425-1489).

These two panels are the uppermost portions of an altar-screen
painted for the Abbey Church of St. Bertin at St. Omer. The remaining
portions are now in the King's Palace at the Hague. These shutters,
and a diptych belonging to the Duc d'Aumale, are the only works that
have come down to us of Marmion, a painter of Valenciennes, worthy
(according to the chroniclers of his time) of great admiration. The two
panels before us had been reposing for thirty years in a lumber-room at
the South Kensington Museum.


1304. MARCUS CURTIUS.

  Unknown (_Umbrian School_: 16th Century).

      So described in the Official Catalogue. By Signor Frizzoni
      the picture is considered to be of the Florentine school,
      and is ascribed to Francesco Ubertini, for whom see No. 1218
      (_Archivio Storico dell' Arte_, 1895, p. 104).

The subject is supposed to be that of the Roman youth who sacrificed
himself by leaping into a chasm which (said the oracle) would never
close until Rome threw into it the most precious thing she had. What
did Rome possess more precious than her arms and courage, said Curtius
as he prepared to leap, in full armour, into the gulf. If this be
the subject here represented, the picture shows in an interesting
way the frank anachronism of the early painters, for the local
colour is certainly not that of the Roman Forum, where Curtius took
his self-sacrificing leap. The picture bears strong resemblance to
Raphael's earlier manner, as any visitor will see who compares it with
the "Vision of a Knight" (213). "Michael Field" has put the sentiment
of the picture into verse in _Sight and Song_:--

    He comes from yonder castle on the steep,
    No Roman, but a lovely Christian knight,
    With azure vest and florid mantle bright,
    Blown, golden hair and youthful face flushed deep
    For glory in the triumph of the leap.
    Though his mild, amber horse rears back at sight
    Of the red flames, though poised for thrust his right
    Hand grasps a knife, his countenance doth keep
    Soft as Saint Michael's with the devil at bay.
    So sweet it is to cast one's life away
    In the fresh pride and perfume of its breath!
    He smiles to think how soon the cleft will close:
    And see, a sun-brimmed cloud above him throws
    Its white effulgence, as he fares to death.


1305. A FAMILY GROUP.

  _G. Donck_ (Dutch: 17th Century).

      There are other signed pictures by this little known painter
      in private collections in Vienna. They bear the dates 1627 and
      1635.

Portraits of Jan van Hensbeeck and his wife, Maria Koeck, with their
infant child between them.


1308. PORTRAIT OF A MAN.

  _J. B. Martinez del Mazo_ (Spanish: 1610-1687).

      Juan Bautista Martinez del Mazo, the favourite pupil and the
      son-in-law of Velazquez, whom he succeeded in 1661 as painter
      to the Spanish Court. In portraiture Mazo was an imitator
      of the great master; he also painted hunting pieces and
      landscapes. His view of Zaragoza, now in the Madrid Gallery, is
      celebrated.

A very short thick-set figure; possibly a portrait of one of Philip
IV.'s court dwarfs.


1309. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.

  _Bernardino Licinio_ (Venetian: painted 1524-1541).

      The above are the earliest and latest dates on his pictures.
      He was a native of Pordenone, in Friuli; a pupil and relative
      of the better known painter who is called after that place.
      There are two pictures by Bernardino at Hampton Court--"A Lady
      playing on the virginals," of rich though muddy colouring; and
      "A Family Group" (dated 1524)--monotonous in composition, but
      brilliant in colour (see Mary Logan's _Guide_, p. 25). He also
      painted altar-pieces, among which one in the Frari at Venice is
      the best.

A young man with feminine features. His black gown, lined with gray
fur, is left open at the chest and discloses a gold chain and pendant.
On the stone plinth whereon he leans is an inscription, "Stephanus
Nani. abavro XVII. MDXXVIII·Lycinivs. P."


1310. "ECCE HOMO!"

  _Cima da Conegliano_ (Venetian: 1460-1518). _See 300._

This picture was sold as a Carlo Dolci; but the attribution was an
obvious absurdity. There is no resemblance whatever between the
affected sentimentality of Dolci and the sincere pathos of this
picture. Its deep and rich colouring also is very different from
Dolci's. Sir Frederick Burton labelled his _trouvaille_ "Giovanni
Bellini." But its attribution to Cima is now accepted. "This type of
Christ," says Mr. Claude Phillips, "of a perfect, manly beauty, of a
divine meekness tempering majesty, dates back not to Gian Bellino but
to Cima. The preferred type of the elder master is more passionate,
more human. Our own Incredulity of St. Thomas, by Cima, shows in a
much more perfunctory fashion a Christ similarly conceived" (_The
Earlier Work of Titian_, p. 31 _n._). To the same effect a writer in
the _Academy_ (July 26, 1890) says: "The modelling--not precise or
searching enough for Giambellino--resembles that of his gifted pupil,
the parted lips being one of his especial characteristics, as may be
noted in his great 'Incredulity of St Thomas' (816). The treatment
of the heavy wig-like masses of the hair, with its fine lines, is
very similar to that of the Saviour's parted locks in the larger
work, while a certain want of flexibility in the muscles of the face
is also a distinguishing mark of the master. More striking still is
the coincidence that from the head of Christ issue in both instances
single rays, disposed in three distinct and separate _fasciculi_--an
arrangement not found, as far as we are aware, in the works of Giovanni
Bellini, and never common in Italian art. The peculiarly brilliant
blue of the drapery is paralleled by that of the little 'St. Jerome'
from the Hamilton Palace Collection, and approached by that of the
'Virgin and Child'--both these panels being sufficiently representative
examples of Cima. Comparison has in these remarks been restricted to
works in the National Gallery, as being most readily available for
purposes of verification. The influence of Antonello--from whom Bellini
himself borrowed so much--is, in the new acquisition, undeniable,
and may account for a virility and an intensity of pathos not often
reached even in the better productions of the sympathetic Bellinesque
painter to whom we would attribute it."


1311. A WINTER SCENE.

  _Jan Beerestraaten_ (Dutch: 1622-1687).

      This painter was the son of a cooper of Amsterdam. He travelled
      much in Holland, staying in all the towns he visited, and
      copying their monuments, squares, and thoroughfares, and
      leaving everywhere on his route a great number of sketches and
      pictures. He painted Italian views also, but these pictures may
      have been founded on local sketches by other Dutch artists.
      "His manner of painting was vigorous; delicate finish and
      precision of touch were less his aim than freedom of handling
      combined with broad contrasts of tone, where the colour, of a
      subdued richness, shows brilliancy and often loses itself in
      harmonies of gray" (_Official Catalogue_, and Havard's _Dutch
      School_, p. 239).

The castle is that of Muiden, between Amsterdam and Naarden. The
fortified village is in the distance. On the left is the Zuyder Zee.
Signed in the foreground, and dated 1658.


1312. THE VILLAGE COBBLER.

  _Jan Victoors_ (Dutch: 1620-1672).

      Victoors, a native of Amsterdam, was a pupil of Rembrandt,
      and attempted biblical subjects in the style of his master; a
      picture by him in this kind may be seen in the Dulwich Gallery.
      But he is seen at his best in portraits and domestic subjects,
      such as that treated in the present picture.


1313. THE ORIGIN OF "THE MILKY WAY."

  _Tintoretto_ (Venetian: 1518-1594). _See 16._

This work, acquired from the Earl of Darnley, is a particularly welcome
addition to the National Gallery; for the two works by Tintoret
previously in the collection,--the "St. George and the Dragon" and
"Christ Washing the Disciples' Feet,"--though fairly representative of
his more sombre mood, give no idea whatever of such radiant forms and
sweeping harmonies as those with which he decorated the Ducal Palace
at Venice. This picture immediately recalls these last-mentioned
works, for it was doubtless designed as the centre-piece for some
painted ceiling. The picture is a very beautiful representation of a
classic myth of the Milky Way. Hermes, it is told, carried the infant
Hercules to Olympus, and put him to the breast of Juno while she lay
asleep; but, as she awoke, she pushed the child from her, and the milk
thus spilled produced the Milky Way. In this picture, however, we see
Jupiter himself descending through the air and bearing the child in
his arms. Juno is rising undraped from her couch, surrounded by little
loves, and attended by peacocks--emblems of her royal state as Queen
of Heaven; while in the deep-blue firmament is the eagle carrying the
thunderbolt of Jupiter. From her bosom issue long lacteal jets that
seem, as it were, to crystallise into stars. Sumptuous draperies float
around the ground, and in most poetical composition Tintoret has thus
"mingled with their gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies."
There is a study for the picture in the Accademia at Venice.


1314. THE AMBASSADORS.

  _Hans Holbein, the Younger_ (German: 1497-1543).

      Hans Holbein--"the greatest master," says Ruskin, "of the
      German, or any northern school"--is closely identified with
      England, and at least seventy important works by him are, it
      is calculated, in this country. He is called "the younger," to
      distinguish him from his father of the same name, who was also
      a celebrated painter.[238] The son was born at Augsburg, but
      migrated early in life to Basle--then a centre of literary and
      artistic activity. There he formed a friendship with Erasmus,
      a portrait of whom from his hand is now one of the treasures
      of the Basle Museum. Both at Basle and at Lucerne Holbein was
      engaged in portraiture, house-decorating, and designs for
      goldsmiths' work. Ruskin traces to Holbein's surroundings at
      Basle the serious temper which characterises much of his art.
      "A grave man, knowing what steps of men keep truest time to the
      chanting of Death. Having grave friends also;--the same singing
      heard far off, it seems to me, or, perhaps even low in the
      room, by that family of Sir Thomas More; or mingling with the
      hum of bees in the meadows outside the towered wall of Basle;
      or making the words of the book more tuneable, which meditative
      Erasmus looks upon. Nay, that same soft death-music is on the
      lips even of Holbein's Madonna." The reference here is to the
      famous "Darmstadt Madonna," which was painted about 1526. In
      that year, leaving his wife and child behind him, Holbein set
      out for England, with letters from Erasmus to Sir Thomas More,
      who received him with honour. From 1528 to 1532 he was again
      in Basle. In the latter year he returned to England to find
      More in disgrace, and no longer able to assist him. Holbein,
      however, met with a warm reception from the German merchants
      of the Steelyard, and painted portraits of many of them. To
      this same period also the present picture belongs. Gradually
      he became known at court, and from 1536 onwards he was in
      the service of Henry VIII., whose high opinion of Holbein is
      recorded in the King's rebuke to one of his courtiers for
      insulting the painter: "You have not to do with Holbein, but
      with me; and I tell you that of seven peasants I can make seven
      lords, but not one Holbein." The portrait of Christina of
      Denmark, lent by the Duke of Norfolk, was one of those painted
      for the King. He paid during these years several visits to the
      Continent, but died in this country--being carried off by the
      plague--in 1543.

      It is as a portrait-painter that Holbein is best known.
      His work in this kind is, says Ruskin, "true and thorough;
      accomplished in the highest as the most literary sense, with
      a calm entireness of unaffected resolution, which sacrifices
      nothing, forgets nothing, and fears nothing." Of his fidelity
      in portraiture and his fine perfection in accessories, we
      have a magnificent example in the picture before us, to which
      what Ruskin says of Holbein's "George Gyzen" (at Berlin)
      equally applies. "In some qualities of force and grace it is
      inferior. But it is inexhaustible. Every detail of it wins,
      retains, rewards the attention with a continually increasing
      sense of wonderfulness. So far as it reaches, it contains the
      absolute facts of colour, form, and character rendered with
      an inaccessible faithfulness. There is no question respecting
      things which it is best worth while to know, or things which
      it is unnecessary to state, or which might be overlooked with
      advantage. What were visible to Holbein, are visible to us;
      we may despise if we will; deny or doubt, we shall not; if we
      care to know anything concerning them, great or small, so much
      as may by the eye be known is for ever knowable, reliable, and
      indisputable." But Holbein, as we have seen, was much more than
      a portrait-painter. Few artists, indeed, have excelled him
      in "majestic range of capacity." His "Madonna" at Darmstadt,
      referred to above (the better known copy of which is at
      Dresden), is one of the great religious pictures of the world.
      (A copy of it is in the Arundel Society's Collection.) He was
      also a fresco-painter, a designer for glass painting, and a
      draughtsman for woodcuts; his designs for the "Dance of Death"
      being the typical expression in Northern art of the spirit of
      the Reformation. (For Ruskin's estimate of Holbein, see further
      _Sir Joshua & Holbein_, reprinted in _On the Old Road_, vol.
      i., and _Ariadne Florentina_, _passim_.)

This celebrated picture is, says Mr. Sidney Colvin, the most important
among Holbein's works--after the Darmstadt Madonna--that are extant in
good preservation, important alike as to scale, and as to richness
and multiplicity of accessories and costumes. It is also one of those
most characteristic of the master, both in his excellences and in
his faults. "There are more completely satisfying works among his
single-figure portraits, in some of which we find a greater artistic
unity--as, for instance, in the portrait of 'Christina, Duchess of
Milan.' Among the faults in the present work may be noticed the
short proportions of the figures in relation to the heads--an effect
exaggerated in the case of the personage on our left by the fashion
of the broad surcoat with its great puffed sleeves. It must further
be admitted that Holbein, who in decorative and ornamental design was
one of the most inventive, adroit, and powerful composers that ever
lived, has in this instance seemed to let his composition take care of
itself.[239] The figures are placed at either end of the desk, with a
certain _naïf_ stiffness almost recalling the pose of a photographic
group. Moreover, masterly and energetic as are the heads in modelling,
in expression they are somewhat rigid, harsh, and staring. Yet, all
deductions made, with what an effective and potent grasp does the
picture hold us! The colouring is richer and more varied than in
any other painting of the master." The accessories are painted with
"such strong minuteness of reality and diligent, though never paltry,
emphasis of detail, that their due subordination to the whole and to
the personages would seem impossible. But the subordination is there
all the same, and how it comes is Holbein's secret. The total effect is
one of singularly rich, if somewhat rigid grandeur;[240] the persons
dominating as they should; the faces and hands remaining the master
features of the picture. The heads, with their hard gaze, lay hold
on the spectator masterfully, so that he cannot forget them after he
has passed away" (_Art Journal_, January 1890). The brilliance of the
picture, now that the discoloured varnish which formerly concealed many
of its beauties has been removed, is very remarkable.[241] Every colour
appears to have stood; and after 370 years the picture remains in its
pristine freshness.

The identity of the personages portrayed in the picture had long
been a subject for critical conjecture among the ingenious. The
picture was traditionally known as "The Ambassadors," and the name
of almost every ambassador of the period had at one time or another
been suggested; while other critics, maintaining that the traditional
title rested on no good authority, went further afield and sought
to identify the personages with various poets and men of letters,
to whom the accessories in the picture seemed appropriate.[242] The
matter has now, however, been finally set at rest by the discovery
of a seventeenth-century manuscript, which gives a description of
the picture and records its history during the first 120 years of
its existence.[243] This manuscript, presented by Miss Mary Hervey
(who discovered it), is now hung in another part of the Gallery (in
the small room marked A on our plan). The traditional title of the
picture is confirmed, for the portraits are of Jean de Dinteville (on
the left), French Ambassador in England, and George de Selve (on the
right), Bishop of Lavaur, and subsequently Ambassador at Venice. The
two men, we learn from the MS., were friends; and in 1533, the year
in which the picture was painted, George de Selve came to England,
by permission of the French king, on a visit to Jean de Dinteville:
"and the two, having there met with an excellent painter of Holland,
employed him to make this picture, which has been carefully preserved
in the same place at Polizy up to the year 1653."

The document itself is convincing, and its identification of the
personages agrees with what may be learnt from an examination of the
picture. There are three inscriptions on it. One is on the sheath
of the dagger which hangs from the girdle of the personage on the
spectator's left. This inscription is: "ÆT. SVÆ 29." On the edges of
a clasped book, upon which the second personage leans, is another
inscription: "ÆTATIS SVÆ 25." Thirdly, in the shadow cast on the floor
by the chief personage is the inscription: "IOHANNES HOLBEIN PINGEBAT,
1533." Jean de Dinteville, Seigneur of Polizy, Bailly of Troyes,
Chevalier de l'Ordre du Roi,--the order of St. Michael, which he wears
in the picture,--was born September 21, 1504, and was, therefore, in
his 29th year, or just the age required by the picture, at the time
of his first Embassy to England in 1533. He remained in this country
from February to November of that year, returning again as Ambassador
in 1536. At a later period of his life he became paralysed and retired
to his estate at Polizy, where he occupied the enforced leisure of his
ill-health in building and embellishing the château, of which a vaulted
undercroft and a few other striking fragments, including an inscription
and some dates, yet remain as a monument to his tastes. He died in
1555. On the globe, which stands on the lower shelf of the what-not,
the names are all of continents, countries, or great cities,--Paris,
Lyons, Bayonne, Genoa, Rome, Nuremberg,--with the single exception
that, in the east of France, we find the name of what is little more
than a village. This name is Polizy.

George de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur, was one of six brothers, nearly all
of whom attained distinction as Ambassadors. In 1526, at the early
age of 18, he was appointed to the See of Lavaur, but he was not
consecrated until 1534, when he was 26. It follows from these dates
that in 1533, the year in which he sat to Holbein, he was 25 years old,
or precisely of the age recorded in the picture. His non-episcopal
dress is explained by the fact that he was only consecrated in the
following year, the same in which he was appointed Ambassador at
Venice. In 1536 he was transferred to Rome, where he remained two
years, and in 1540 we find him intrusted with an important mission
to Charles V. Having voluntarily returned to his diocese when at the
zenith of his career, in order to devote himself completely to his
episcopal duties, he died in 1542 (N.S.) at the early age of 34. His
profound learning, his piety, his keen interest in all intellectual
pursuits, make him one of the remarkable figures of his day.

Some further description of the details may assist the spectator in his
examination of the picture. The background is hung with green damask,
which in the upper left-hand corner reveals a silver crucifix. Jean de
Dinteville, the figure on the left, habited in the rich costume of the
period of Henry VIII. and Francis I., wears a heavy gold chain with the
badge (as already explained) of the French Order of St. Michael. In his
right hand he holds a richly-chased gold dagger, "the design of which
is manifestly Holbein's own; and beside it hangs a large green and gold
silk tassel, in itself a miracle of painting." In his black bonnet is
a jewel formed of a silver skull set in gold. The other personage is
more soberly attired. He wears a loose, long-sleeved gown of mulberry
and black brocade, lined with sable, and the four-cornered black cap,
"which was in that age the common headgear of scholars, university
doctors, and ecclesiastics in undress." "The contrast between the
swordsman on one side and the gownsman on the other is characteristic
of the era and profession of the two ambassadors." The upper shelf
of the stand, or what-not, between the two figures is covered with
a Turkish rug, very beautifully painted, and on this are several
mathematical and astronomical instruments, and, close to the principal
personage, a celestial globe. Conspicuous on the lower shelf is a lute,
of which one of the strings was broken and curled up over the unbroken
one. On the lower shelf also are a case of flutes; an open music-book,
containing part of the score and words of the Lutheran hymn, "Komm,
heiliger Geist";[245] a smaller book on arithmetic, kept partly open by
a small square, a pair of compasses, and a terrestrial hand-globe (in
direct line below the other globe). On this globe the famous line drawn
by Pope Alexander VI. in 1493 between the spheres of influence of Spain
and Portugal is marked. Underneath the what-not is the lute-case; and
a fine mosaic adorns the floor. The design of this is (as Miss Hervey
points out) an accurate copy of the well-known mosaic pavement in the
Sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, for the construction of which marbles
and workmen were brought from Italy by Abbot Richard Ware in the reign
of Henry III. "Nothing brings the English sojourn of the great painter
more closely home to us than to fancy him wandering through the aisles
of the venerable Abbey--venerable even then--to sketch the outlines of
the historic pavement trodden by so many generations before and since
that time."

On the floor is a mysterious-looking object, which puzzled the
connoisseurs for centuries. Even the late Mr. Wornum could make
nothing of it; and in his book on Holbein (1867) dismissed it as "a
singular object which looks like the bones of some fish." The puzzle
was first solved by Dr. Woodward in 1873, when the picture was hung in
the "Old Masters" Exhibition. The curious fish-like object is simply
the anamorphosis--the distorted projection--of a human skull. It was
probably drawn from the reflection in a cylindrical mirror; and it
is seen to be an accurate representation when viewed from the proper
point. If the spectator cannot discover this for himself, the attendant
will readily assist him. One must stand at a little distance off and
look in the direction of the length of the object from the right hand
in order to "find the skull." Pictorial puzzles such as the skull were
at the time not uncommon. Allusions to such things are to be found in
old inventories of pictures; and Shakespeare in _Richard II._ says:

    Like pérspectives, which, _rightly_ gazed upon,
    Show nothing but confusion: eyed _awry_
    Distinguish form.--Act II. Sc. 2.

Similarly, Canon Ainger has pointed out that in _Twelfth Night_, when
the Duke first becomes aware that Viola and Sebastian, who had up to
that time from their exact likeness been thought the same person, are
really two, he cries out that here is a puzzle in nature corresponding
to those in art, where an object varies according to the point of view
from which it is regarded:

    A natural perspective--that is and is not!

As to the interpretation and significance of the puzzle, authorities
differ. Some see in the skull only a punning signature of the painter's
name (_hohl bein_, hollow bone, holbein). Others discover in it a
recondite allusion to Cranmer (crâne-mère). Others again, when the
identity of the personages was still in dispute, sought to connect
the skull with the death of one or other of them; most ingenious and
far-fetched theories were elaborated by Sir F. Burton and others with
this object. Probably, however, the distorted skull is only a variant
on the _memento mori_, which occurs very frequently in portraits of the
time (see, for instance, No. 1036). It may be (as Miss Hervey suggests)
that Dinteville had adopted the death's-head as his personal badge or
_devise_. He suffered from ill-health, and in a letter to his brother
describes himself as "the most melancholy ambassador that ever was
seen."

There is still a field open to conjecture with regard to the elaborate
accessories described above. Mr. Sidney Colvin thinks, indeed, that
the globes, quadrant, music-book, etc., are probably simply introduced
by the painter to show his skill of hand for the satisfaction of his
patrons, the choice of objects having been made partly in compliment
to them as persons interested in music and the sciences, partly because
they were the properties readiest to hand in the society of such men
as Kratzer, the astronomer, and the German merchant goldsmiths of the
Steelyard, among whom Holbein lived (_Times_, Dec. 10, 1895). Miss
Hervey sees in the accessories "a record, probably unique in the domain
of art, of the thoughts and studies, the hopes and fears, which swayed
the country and generation of Jean de Dinteville. The objects selected
for illustration precisely represent the pursuits and occupations most
in vogue at the time in France. Geometry and Mechanics, the foundations
of the builder's art, just then attaining classical expression in the
lovely creations of the French Renaissance; Music, especially that of
the lute, which was so fashionable that every Frenchman of exalted
position carried a lutist in his train; the ingeniously contrived and
artistically rendered _devise_; these, as the literature of the period
abundantly testifies, were among the favourite studies and pastimes
of the Court of France." Dinteville "must have devoted many an hour
to thinking out with the painter the elaborate details." A different
contention has been argued with much ability by Mr. Alfred Marks:--

      The scheme of the picture is very unusual. At either end of a
      table of two stages stands a figure in a ceremonious attitude.
      Between these figures, the two stages of the table, occupying
      the middle and most prominent portion of the picture, are
      loaded with numerous accessories. The method of their display
      forbids us to suppose that, as suggested by Mr. Colvin,
      they are here merely to show the painter's skill of hand.
      Indeed, the whole scheme of the picture--pose of figures and
      arrangement of accessories--tells of some occasion which the
      picture is designed to commemorate, or, let us say, perhaps,
      some occasion of which advantage has been taken to place the
      personages in a situation of more than ordinary interest. What
      this occasion was the picture, as we shall find, declares
      with sufficient plainness. Holbein's symbolism was simple
      and direct. Does he desire to convey that his sitter is a
      merchant? The figure is represented as holding a bond; other
      bonds lie on a table, together with a seal and a pen. Or, if he
      is portraying an astronomer, he introduces a quadrant, dials,
      compasses, and other instruments of the craft. In the "Two
      Ambassadors" the symbolism is, from the nature of the case,
      not personal to each of the two figures, but applicable to the
      occasion. The lute, instrument of harmony, was already, as has
      been shown by Mr. Dickes [see _Magazine of Art_, December 1891
      and June 1892], the accepted symbol of a treaty; the suggestion
      is strengthened by the introduction of a case of flutes. The
      occasion commemorated is, therefore, a treaty. Nor are we left
      in doubt as to the nature of this treaty; the globes celestial
      and terrestrial, the compasses, dials, quadrants, merchants'
      calculating book, clearly indicate that the treaty was one
      relating to commerce or navigation.

Mr. Marks discovers in support of his theory that in 1533 (the date of
the picture) some agreement was arrived at between King Henry VIII.
and the French Ambassador with regard to certain grievances of French
merchants. George de Selve, as we have seen, came over to England with
the French King's permission and assisted Dinteville, it is suggested,
in the arrangement, the conclusion of which is celebrated by Holbein's
picture (_Times_, Dec. 7, 12, 23, 1895).

With regard to the _provenance_ of the picture, in the year 1653 it
was still, as we have seen, at the château of Polizy. The next known
notices of it occur in a Rouen catalogue of 1787, and in the _Galerie
des Peintres_ (1792) of J. R. P. Lebrun (husband of the artist
Vigée-Lebrun), who had the picture in his possession, and states that
he had sold it, and that it was then in England. It seems probable that
it came into the hands of the dealer Vandergutsch, and that from him it
was purchased by the second Earl of Radnor about 1808 or 1809, in whose
family it became an heirloom. In 1891 it was purchased from the present
earl for the nation.[246]


1315. THE ADMIRAL PULIDO PAREJA.

  _Velazquez_ (Spanish: 1599-1660). _See 197._

One of the master's most famous works. "In the year 1639," says
Palomino, "he made the picture of Don Adrian Pulido Pareja, a native
of Madrid, Knight of the Order of Santiago, Admiral of the Fleet of
New Spain, who about that time was here transacting various official
matters with His Majesty. This portrait is life size, and is among the
most famous painted by Velazquez, on which account he put his name to
it, which he otherwise seldom did: _Didacus Velazquez fecit; Philip IV.
à cubiculo eiusque Pictor, anno 1639_." The painter's signature was not
the only thing which served at the time to stamp the picture as one of
special excellence. The King one day was paying his customary visit
to the painter; Philip mistook the picture for the admiral himself,
and rebuked him for tarrying in Madrid when he had been ordered away.
Perceiving his mistake, he addressed Velazquez with the words: 'I
assure you I was deceived.' "This, of course," says Mr. Colvin, "is one
of the common legends which abound in the art history of all countries,
from Greece to Japan; but it is almost possible to believe the tale
when we look at the picture. Something of the rugged flashing power and
fierce eagerness of the sitter seems to have passed into the painter's
hand, and the method of execution he has chosen emphasises and
harmonises with the character of the subject. The rude soldier-sailor
in his handsome suit stands in bodily and spiritual presence before us,
and seems snorting with impatience to be off to the fight once more."

Pulido, the subject of the picture, was a captain who distinguished
himself greatly during the siege of Fontarabia, in the war with France.
"The browned face with gleams of white light belongs," says Professor
Justi, in describing the picture, "to a not uncommon Castilian type,
of which this is an exceptionally stout, sturdy, grim specimen. The
thick black shady eyebrows, very bushy and nearly meeting above the
nose, the perpendicular wrinkle right in the middle of the forehead,
the up-twirled mustachio,--the whole enframed in an abundant mass
of black hair parted on one side and profusely crowning the defiant
head,--bespeak the dauntless soldier as he stood on the ramparts of
Fontarabia, as he will yet stand on the quarter-deck of the Admiral's
ship in the hottest of the fight. There is nothing of the courtier in
the attitude, for he stands bolt upright, like a soldier before his
commanding officer. We see at once that he is not the man to hesitate
about risking his own life or that of others in the deadly jaws of a
breach. Both hands wear the yellow leather gloves, the right holding
the Admiral's staff, the left a very broad-brimmed felt hat. On his
breast is the red, gold-hemmed scarf and the red enamelled decoration
of the Order of Santiago"--which the King had bestowed upon him for his
gallantry in the siege.

With regard to the _technique_ of the picture, Palomino tells us that
Velazquez painted it with brushes of unusual length, in order to work
with greater force and effect standing at a distance. "It appears in
fact (says Professor Justi) to have been very broadly treated, with
more fiery vigour than delicacy. The light yellow-gray ground--dark
above, and without any relation to the limits of wall and floor--has
been specially prepared with reference to the black velvet costume.
Don Adrian stands a little to the left, his glance directed towards
the observer, legs[247] brought close together, feet almost at a right
angle. The colour is applied more freely than usual, the otherwise
rarely employed dazzling white patches on the deep lace collar,
flowered satin sleeves, plumes, bows on the knees, and accoutrements,
helping the illusion."


1316. AN ITALIAN NOBLEMAN.

  _Moroni_ (Bergamese: 1525-1578). _See 697._

Inferior in charm and interest to some of the other Moronis previously
in the National Gallery, and to many of the master's marvellous
pictures in the Carrara Collection at Bergamo. "Only," says a recent
critic, "in the expressive look in the dreamy eyes, and in the drawing
and painting of the left arm, clothed in chain-armour, do we find
interest." Another, and more favourable, critic (Mr. Sidney Colvin)
says: "Dignity and directness of presentment, richness of quality
and mellowness of tone, with a colour-sense never more powerfully
shown than when the scheme is one of flesh-colour with simple black
and white on gray--these are the universal qualities of Venetian
portrait-painting.... This is a thoroughly characteristic example in
an excellent state. We already possess a portrait by the same hand,
composed of much the same elements (1022): a man in a close-fitting
black suit, showing chain-armour on the sleeves, a broken column, a
wall, and a glimpse of sky. The two will make admirable pendants."


1317. THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN.

  _Unknown_ (Sienese School: 14th or early 15th Century).

This is one of the stock subjects in which the evolution of Italian
art may be most clearly traced. Everybody knows the beautiful and
celebrated "Sposalizio" of Raphael at Milan, which in its turn was
copied, with some characteristic modifications, from Perugino's
picture, now at Caen. Comparing those versions of the subject with an
early one such as this, every one will be struck by the difference in
general effect, but not less remarkable are the resemblances. The type,
so far as the component parts are concerned, remains constant. The
basis of the tale which Italian painters told for century after century
is found in two of the apocryphal gospels. In them we read how the
"Virgin of the Lord" was brought up, like Samuel, within the precincts
of the temple, and how the High Priest summoned the suitors to an
ordeal. Every man of them was to take a rod, and he whose rod should
miraculously put forth leaves and blossom was to be chosen as husband.
The common features of all "Sposalizio" pictures adhere closely to this
legend. Thus the action always takes place within or just outside the
temple. In the centre stands the High Priest with a long gray beard and
(almost always) a high-peaked mitre, the Italian painters' idea of a
Jewish ephod. He joins the hands of the pair in betrothal. The rod of
Joseph blossoms, and above its foliage hovers the Holy Spirit in the
form of a dove. One of the suitors is about to strike Joseph in his
passion; another is engaged in breaking his rod in vexation. Raphael
makes the mien of the suitors much more gentle. He leaves out "the
passionate suitor" altogether, but gives to the "disappointed suitor"
a prominent place as an opportunity for a graceful attitude. In this
picture he is very much in the background (in the extreme left-hand
corner).


1318. "UNFAITHFULNESS."

  _Paolo Veronese_ (Veronese: 1528-1588). _See 26._

One of a series: see under 1324-26.


1319. VIEW IN ROME.

  _Claude_ (French: 1600-1682). _See 2._

On the right of the composition are an ancient Ionic portico (seen from
the side) and a statue of Apollo, surrounded by trees. On the left is a
wooded slope, beyond which, in the middle distance, is seen the church
of Sta. Trinita de' Monti with other buildings.


1320, 1321. A MAN AND HIS WIFE.

  _Cornelis Janssens_ (Dutch: 1594-1664).

      This painter--Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen--is believed to have
      been born in London. He was taken into the service of James
      I., whose portrait he painted several times. In the National
      Portrait Gallery are portraits by him of Sir Edward Coke and
      Lord Coventry. His reputation waned somewhat after the arrival
      of Van Dyck, whose portrait he painted and whose influence
      may be noticed in the pictures now before us. In the Dulwich
      Gallery are two pictures formerly ascribed to Van Dyck, but
      now to Janssens. In 1648 "Cornelius Johnson, picture-drawer"
      was permitted by the Speaker's warrant to pass beyond seas
      with such goods and chattels as belonged to himself. On his
      return to Holland, he seems to have worked at Middelburg,
      at the Hague, and at Amsterdam. Pictures by him may be seen
      in all those places. His portraits are sometimes stiff in
      conception, but are remarkable for the "lively tranquillity of
      the countenances." None of the artists excelled him in painting
      the lace collars and cuffs which were the reigning fashion of
      the time.

The man is Aglonius Voon; the woman (presumably his wife), Cornelia
Remoens: the names are inscribed above their heads.


1323. PIERO DI MEDICI.

  _Angelo Bronzino_ (Florentine: 1502-1572). _See 649._

A portrait of Piero, son of Cosimo the elder--surnamed "Il Gottoso,"
The Gouty--who died in 1469. Bronzino was employed to paint the
portraits of many members of the Medici family. No. 704 is a
contemporary portrait of one of the later Dukes.


1324. "SCORN."


1325. "RESPECT."


1326. "HAPPY UNION."

  _Paolo Veronese_ (Veronese: 1528-1588). _See 26._

The four Veroneses (1325, 1324, 1318, and 1326), acquired from
Cobham Hall, "obviously formed a series, or portions of a series,
of enrichments for a ceiling, and must be looked at accordingly.
They exhibit the decorative power of Veronese at a very high
pitch in respect to colour, composition, and action, while his
characteristically large and bold style of design and draughtsmanship
are most fortunately employed upon them. One may readily conceive
the magnificence of the saloon for which they were executed, and of
which they must have been the chief ornaments. Sumptuous as they are
now, their superb qualities would be enhanced if they could be seen
with all their original accompaniments of gilding, carved frames, and
magnificent furniture" (_Athenæum_, August 16, 1890).

The subjects of the pictures are moral allegories, and they go in
pairs. Thus we have first "Respect" (1325) and "Scorn" (1324). In the
former picture, a nude female figure--whose beautiful face recalls
that of the "St. Helena" (see No. 1041)--is seen recumbent on a couch,
asleep or lost in dreams. Cupid is leading a warrior, clad in sumptuous
costume, but he turns aside, held back by an older man, in chivalrous
_respect_. He is contrasted in the companion picture with another male
figure, who lies prostrate while a Cupid tramples in _scorn_ upon him.
On the left two females (contrasting with the two men in the former
pictures) are hurrying away. The elder carries an ermine, the emblem of
purity, and guides the younger and more beautiful woman whom she has
rescued from peril.

In the other two pictures the faithfulness and unfaithfulness of woman
are similarly contrasted. In "Unfaithfulness" (1318) a nude female
figure, seated on a bank with her back turned to the spectator, extends
her arm towards a man who grasps her right hand, while she with her
left is employed in furtively delivering a letter to a more youthful
lover on the other side. He is of the same type as the figure of
Alexander in the Family of Darius (294). Finally, in "Happy Union"
(1326) the painter shows us the reward of faithfulness. Here a Cupid
is introducing a warrior to a queenly figure--whom we may take to
personify Fame or Fortune--seated on a globe at the entrance to some
palace. She is placing a wreath upon the man's brow; he is led by a
beautiful woman who carries a palm which she is about to present to
him. She in her turn is guided by a little Love who has hold of a
golden chain around her waist. A dog is also in attendance. It is a
pretty trait of the Venetian schools, the frequency with which a pet
dog is introduced into scenes of domestic felicity.

The prices paid for these pictures are interesting. They belonged at
one time to Queen Christina of Sweden, and afterwards passed into
the Orleans Collection. At the sale of that collection, the Tintoret
fetched £50, and the four Veroneses £198. Lord Darnley made a handsome
"unearned increment" out of them. For the Tintoret and one of the
Veroneses (1318) the nation paid £2500. For two more of the Veroneses
the same price was paid. The fourth Veronese (1325) was presented by
Lord Darnley.


1327. A WINTER SCENE.

  _Jan van Goyen_ (Dutch: 1596-1656). _See 137._

The scene is an arm of the Maes, near Dordrecht; the ice being covered
with skaters, hockey-players, and others. The figures are treated with
considerable humour. In the distance rises the tall ruin, which is
shown in so many of Cuyp's pictures. Van Goyen's signature and the date
1642 are conspicuous on a sleigh in the foreground.


1329. AN INTERIOR.

  _Quiryn Brekelenham_ (Dutch: 1625-1668).

      A native of Zwammerdam near Leyden, in which town he joined the
      Guild of St. Luke in 1648. He was a pupil of Gerard Dou, but
      did not adopt the high finish of that master; his style may
      be called an admixture of that of Dou with that of Rembrandt.
      He was a painter of quiet interiors, industrious households,
      and kitchen scenes. "Inspired by Rembrandt's teaching, he
      placed his figures in a beautiful amber light. They are neither
      too graceful nor too striking, but singularly lifelike and
      truthful. The scenes in which he delights are always quiet,
      modest, and sober in movement and expression. His touch is
      free, supple, and soft" (Havard: _The Dutch School_, p. 182).
      Some of his best works are in the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam. Our
      picture is signed, and dated 1653.


1330. THE TRANSFIGURATION.

  _Duccio_ (Sienese: about 1260-1340). _See 566._

"Clinging more closely to Byzantine traditions than any other of the
works of Duccio in the Gallery, is the panel of 'The Transfiguration,'
with the folds of the drapery indicated by gold lines. The elements of
this ancient design, like those of nearly all the Byzantine conceptions
of scenes of sacred history, were never wholly departed from; they
remain still quite recognisable in 'The Transfiguration' of Raphael"
(Monkhouse: _In the National Gallery_, p. 16).


1331. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Bernardino Fungai_ (Sienese: about 1460-1516).

      "In flatness, absence of chiaroscuro, and use of gilding, he
      partakes of the Sienese School," resembling, for instance,
      Matteo di Giovanni (1155). "But he is rather pleasing in his
      children and angels, where he is influenced by Perugino; also
      in his landscapes, which, though peculiar in their faint blue
      distance, recall Pinturicchio. A characteristic of the master
      is the heaviness of his hands at the fingers' ends" (Layard's
      edition of "Kugler," i. 205). Fungai may best be studied in the
      Accademia of Siena.

The style of this painter is dismissed by Lanzi as "dry," and by
another authority as "dry and stiff." There is a certain stiffness,
undoubtedly--due probably in part to religious symbolism--in the hands
of the Virgin and in the upraised finger of the Child, and in those of
the otherwise human and chubby cherubim. But there is nothing dry or
stiff in the pretty faces of these children, or in the gracious and
beautiful face of the mother. She is clad in a white-and-gold brocade
of very beautiful pattern. "One of the finest of the kind known to us,
it appears," says the _Athenæum_, "to be of Venetian origin, and is a
pure and perfect diaper, instinct with the choicest Gothic grace and
harmony of line, and betraying but the slightest touch of Orientalism.
This circumstance attests that the brocade did not come from a Sicilian
loom, while other elements prohibit us from ascribing it to an
ultramontane craftsman." The landscape background, which has sadly
darkened, has many quaint figures--on one side Mary, Joseph, and a cow;
on the other, the Three Kings and their attendants.


1332. GEORGE, 1ST EARL OF BERKELEY.

  _G. Netscher_ (Dutch: 1639-1784). _See 843._

The first Earl of Berkeley--a man of considerable note in his day, and
the author of a religious work to which some complimentary couplets
by Waller have given a kind of immortality--was born in 1628 and died
in 1698. He was one of the Commissioners nominated in 1660 to proceed
to the Hague to invite Charles to return to the kingdom, and shortly
afterwards he received various important appointments. In 1688, after
the flight of the King, he was one of the lords assembled at the
Guildhall to draw up the celebrated declaration constituting themselves
a provisional government until such time as the Prince of Orange should
arrive.


1333. THE DEPOSITION FROM THE CROSS.

  _Tiepolo_ (Venetian: 1692-1769). _See 1192._


1334. THE FORTUNE-TELLER.

  _Pietro Longhi_ (Venetian: 1702-1762). _See 1100._

A girl, in the hooped dress and three-cornered hat of the 18th century,
is having her hand read by a fortune-teller, while a cloaked cavalier,
standing near in a white domino, watches the result.


1335. THE MADONNA.

  _Unknown_ (French School: 15th Century).

The face is most delicately executed; the white head-cloth and gown
are covered by a blue mantle, which is jewelled and embroidered at the
edge. The originally gold background is now brown; the nimbus of the
Virgin is punctured in a beautiful foliated design.


1336. THE DEATH OF DIDO.

  _Ascribed to Liberale da Verona_ (Veronese: 1451-1535).
  _See 1134._

Painted probably to adorn the front of a _cassone_ or marriage-chest.
"The buildings of the forum in which the pyre stands are copied from
well-known monuments at Verona. In the background on the left are seen
two spectators in the everyday costume of the artist's contemporaries.
The one on the left-hand side seems from his dress to be a German.
Dürer has portrayed himself in an exactly similar way. The identity
of the person thus represented will always remain hypothetical;
nevertheless, the soldier leaning on his lance, on the extreme right,
points directly to Dürer, for the figure is taken from a well-known
engraving by him" (Dr. Richter in the _Art Journal_, February 1895).


1337. "ECCE HOMO!"

  _Bazzi_ (Lombard: 1477-1549). _See 1144._

Probably part of a picture of Christ bearing His Cross. The face wears
a gentle, grave, and dignified expression on features of a noble type.


1338. THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.


1339. THE NATIVITY OF ST. JOHN.

  _Bernhard Fabritius_ (Dutch: painted 1650-1672).

      Of this painter very little is known. He was a member of the
      Painters' Guild at Leyden, and it is clear from his works that
      he was a disciple of Rembrandt.

(1338). The subject is treated with Dutch directness. It is a Dutch
interior with Dutch peasants. An opening in the roof discloses a peep
of landscape in the light of early dawn.

(1339). Somewhat more academic in treatment. The infant saint lies in a
wicker cradle, at the foot of which lies St. Elizabeth, who offers an
apple to another child standing by the side of its nurse or mother. To
the right of the picture St. Zacharias writes on a tablet the record of
the birth.


1340. LANDSCAPE.

  _Roeland Roghman_ (Dutch: 1597-1686).

      Roghman is a landscape-painter widely known by his drawings and
      etchings. He was a friend of Rembrandt. His pictures usually
      represent views in Holland and on the borders of Germany, but
      he travelled also in the Tyrol. His works "exhibit a close
      attention to nature in the forms, but his colour is dark and
      disagreeable" (Bryan).


1341. A WOODLAND SCENE.

  _Cornelius Decker_ (Dutch: died 1678). _See 134._


1342. LANDSCAPE.

  _J. de Wet_ (Dutch: 17th Century).

      This is the only landscape subject known to bear the signature
      of J. de Wet; other works so signed are of biblical subjects. A
      Jan de Wet, a native of Hamburg, was a pupil of Rembrandt,--a
      tutelage not inconsistent with the style of this picture.


1343. AMSTERDAM MUSKETEERS ON PARADE.

  _Unknown_ (Dutch School: about 1650).

Formerly attributed to Govert Flinck (1615-1660), who was a pupil of
Rembrandt, and was commissioned to paint many considerable works for
the Town Hall of Amsterdam. Observe the group of officers on the left;
one bears a standard embroidered with the arms of that city.


1344. A LANDSCAPE.

  _Salomon Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1600-1670).

      A good example of one of the founders of the Haarlem School of
      Landscape, uncle of the more famous Jacob Ruysdael. Like his
      nephew, he was a member of the sect of Mennonites. He appears
      to have had some talent for business; he was a prominent
      officer to the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, and there is a story
      of his having invented a sort of imitation marble, by the sale
      of which he was able to live in easier circumstances than the
      majority of his artistic brethren. Salomon's work resembles
      much that of Van Goyen (see 137), and it is difficult to
      distinguish early works by the two painters. Afterwards they
      diverged. "Van Goyen prefers the round forms of the clouds
      that on a fine summer day overhang the Maas; his brush always
      plays with the delicacy of their shadows, and loves to turn a
      landscape into what the moderns would call 'a harmony of gray
      and silver.' Salomon Ruysdael is by no means so reticent in the
      matter of colour. His skies in his later period are frankly
      blue" (_Quarterly Review_, October 1891).

There is in this picture "a peculiarly sharp, clear, and firm touch,
very like that of Stark of Norwich. The warm, deep-toned evening sky is
admirable" (_Athenæum_). The picture is signed, and dated 1659.


1345. LANDSCAPE.

  _Jan Wouwerman_ (Dutch: 1629-1666).

      Jan was a younger brother and pupil of the more famous Philips
      (see 878). Some works by another brother, Pieter, may be seen
      in the Dulwich Gallery.


1346. A WINTER SCENE.

  _Hendrik van Avercamp_ (Dutch: 1585-1663).

      A characteristically animated work by the Mute of Kampen, as
      this painter was called. He was the son of a schoolmaster. He
      was born dumb, and documents have been discovered in which his
      mother speaks of her "dumb and pitiable son." Having shown
      an early talent for drawing, he was placed with a painter at
      Amsterdam, and there and at the Hague he practised until 1625.
      He afterwards joined his widowed mother at Kampen. In her will
      of 1633 she made provision for him "in order that he may not be
      a burden on his brothers and sister." He loved especially to
      depict lively scenes of winter sport. He defines his figures
      sharply against the ice and snow. "The refined modulations of
      tint and the delicacies of aerial perspective, aimed at by
      painters of such scenes in the middle of the 17th century, are
      seldom found in Avercamp's works" (Official Catalogue).


1347. FARMYARD SCENE.

  _Isaak van Ostade_ (Dutch: 1621-1649). _See 847._

The crisp touch and golden light in this Cuyp-like picture will please
all lovers of Dutch art.


1348. LANDSCAPE WITH GOAT AND KID.

  _Adrian van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1635-1672). _See 867._

A pleasant twilight effect.


1352. LANDSCAPE.

  _F. de Moucheron_ (Dutch: 1633-1686). _See 842._

The signature of the artist is on the cornice of one of the buildings.
Possibly Lingelbach (see 837), who often worked with Moucheron, painted
the figures.


1353. LANDSCAPE WITH SATYRS.

  _Martin Ryckhaert_ (Flemish: 1587-1631).

      Martin Ryckhaert was a son of the elder, and brother of the
      younger, David Ryckhaert. He studied, and for some years
      practised his art, in Italy. He is entered in the register of
      the Painters' Guild at Antwerp as "a painter with one arm," and
      is so represented in the portrait by Van Dyck in the Dresden
      Gallery.


1375. CHRIST IN THE HOUSE OF MARTHA.

  _Velazquez_ (Spanish: 1590-1660). _See 197._

A picture of the earliest, or Seville period of the painter. Though
professedly a religious subject, it is in reality one of the
_bodegones_, or tavern-pieces, which had come into favour at Seville
during the end of the sixteenth century--naturalistic studies of
the tavern and the kitchen. "They are certainly to be valued," says
Pacheco, "when painted as Velazquez paints them, for in this branch
he has attained such an eminence that he has left room for no rival.
They deserve high esteem; for with these elements and with portraiture
he discovered the true imitation of Nature." In the background, shown
through a window or square opening in the wall, is seen an inner
chamber with Christ addressing Martha, who stands, and Mary, who kneels
before Him.


1376. A DUEL IN THE PRADO (A SKETCH).

  _Velazquez_ (Spanish: 1599-1660). _See 197._

Note that some of the figures in the foreground closely resemble the
group in "The Boar Hunt" (No. 197).


1377. THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.

  _Venetian School_ (16th Century).

Formerly ascribed to Savoldo (see 1031). "In its deep and striking
chiaroscuro it reminds one of a greater and later artist, Bassano,
and even of the earlier works of Velazquez. It is a very interesting
picture, full of imagination, especially in its landscape, and
generally in fine condition. For light and effective painting, look at
the pigeons in the basket on the right" (Monkhouse: _In the National
Gallery_, p. 261). This picture was bequeathed by the late Sir William
Gregory, one of the Trustees of the Gallery, who secured it for the
paltry sum of £12: 10s., and was (as we know from his "Autobiography")
justly proud of his bargain.[248]


1378. AN INTERIOR WITH FIGURES.

  _Jan Steen_ (Dutch: 1626-1679). _See 856._

Another of Sir William's bequests, and, like the preceding, "a
bargain." "A French dealer," he wrote, "offered me £250 the day after I
had bought it for £2: 3s." An itinerant musician enters the kitchen in
a village inn or country farmhouse, and salutes the buxom lady of the
house with a fantastic gesture of courtesy. A flute sticks out of his
pocket.


1380. FRUIT AND FLOWER PIECE.

  _Jan van Os_ (Dutch: 1744-1808). _See 1015._


1381. THE HOLY WOMEN AT THE SEPULCHRE.

  _Francesco Mantegna_ (Paduan: about 1470-1517.)
  _See 639._

For the subject, see 576. Notice the pool in the foreground on which
are two water-fowl, while a tortoise crawls towards it. This picture is
the same size as 639 and 1106, and the three beautiful little panels
doubtless formed a series--now at last brought together again, having
been long separated in three different collections.


1383. "LA JEUNE FEMME AU CLAVECIN."

  _Jan Vermeer of Delft_ (Dutch: 1632-1675).

      This picture formerly belonged to the celebrated French critic
      Thoré (who wrote under the name of "W. Bürger"), to whom
      belongs the credit of having rescued Vermeer from oblivion.
      He was famous in his own day, being one of the chiefs of the
      Delft Guild of Artists. But after his death his works were
      dispersed or destroyed or ascribed to Pieter de Hooch, and
      his very existence was forgotten till "Bürger's" researches
      rehabilitated him (see _Gazette des Beaux Arts_, 1866, pp.
      297, 458, 542). He was born in Delft, and was for a short time
      a pupil of Carel Fabritius, a painter who was deeply imbued
      with the spirit and manner of Rembrandt. Vermeer obtained good
      prices for his pictures, but his circumstances cannot have
      been flourishing, for his widow had to apply to the court of
      insolvency to be placed under a curator. His works are now
      rare and costly: for the present picture £2400 was paid. The
      artist with whom Vermeer has the closest affinity is De Hooch.
      At an auction in Amsterdam in the middle of the 17th century a
      De Hooch is praised as being "nearly equal to the famous Van
      der Meer of Delft," and there is often some confusion between
      the works of the two painters. Substitute red for blue, it has
      been said, and a Vermeer becomes a De Hooch. Both painters
      are remarkable for the quality of light displayed in their
      interiors, and Vermeer has never been surpassed in the cool
      general effect which he produced. "Though in perfection of
      execution," says M. Havard, "the one rivals the other, they
      differ singularly in their use of the brush. Whilst Hooch
      has a vigorous and supple touch, Vermeer on the other hand,
      proceeding by short steps, paints in small patches, and then
      connects the whole by glazing in a manner peculiar to himself,
      which produces a vibrating effect, a characteristic of this
      original painter which we cannot forget" (_The Dutch School_,
      p. 186). Beauty of tone and perfect harmony are conspicuous
      in all his works, which in some other respects exhibit marked
      differences, for "the Sphinx of Delft" (as Bürger calls him)
      had several manners. It is supposed that he worked for a time
      under Rembrandt. The picture of four life-sized figures in
      the Dresden Gallery called "Les Courtisanes," and dated 1656,
      suggests the influence of that master. During the last ten or
      twelve years of his life he adopted a second manner, of greater
      delicacy and subtlety. In all his works there is a singular
      completeness and charm. He is a master in rendering momentary
      expression, and his pictures attract by the successful
      delineation of character, as well as by the skill with which he
      makes his figures move in light and air. He has also a complete
      mastery of perspective, and in his effects of light upon flat
      surfaces he is unsurpassed.

This picture is a good example of the qualities described above.[249]
"The head, however, has unfortunately suffered from over-cleaning,
showing the gray under-painting which gives the picture a colder
aspect than it would otherwise have" (Official Catalogue). The picture
has a very good "pedigree," Bürger, to whom it once belonged, having
traced it back, through the Solly and Danser-Nyman Collections, to an
anonymous sale catalogue of 1714.


1386. SOLDIERS QUARRELLING OVER THEIR BOOTY.


1387. PLAYERS AT TRIC-TRAC.

  _W. C. Duyster_ (Dutch: 1599-1635).

These pictures are by one of the rarest of the Dutch masters--William
Cornells Duyster, a painter of Amsterdam. They were acquired from a
family in whose possession they have been ever since they were brought
over to this country by an officer in the army of William III. The fine
execution and brilliant condition of the pictures make them decidedly
attractive. They are both signed; 1386, on a box in the foreground;
1387, on the border of the beautifully-painted tablecloth.


1390. A SEA-PIECE.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See 627._

An excellent example of Ruysdael's sea-pieces, in which he was not
surpassed by any painter of the time. The view represented is the shore
at Scheveningen. This picture, for which the sum of £3045 was paid by
the nation, changed hands in 1872 for £68 as one of a pair!


1393. A MEDITERRANEAN SEAPORT.

  _Claude Joseph Vernet_ (French: 1714-1789). _See 236._

The frigate is flying the Dutch tricolor flag. At the foot of the
fortified wall is a party of Turkish or Albanian merchants.


1397. AN OLD WOMAN SEWING.

  _Unknown_ (Dutch School: 17th Century).

On the wall behind is an engraved portrait of a gentleman, with an
inscription in which the name, Jan van Aach, and the date 1655 occur.
The name is possibly that of the unknown painter.


1399. PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN.

  _Gerard Terburg_ (Dutch: 1617-1681). _See 864._

This and the following picture were in the collection of the late
Sir Charles Eastlake. By the provisions of his will, they were to be
offered to the National Gallery at the prices he paid for them, viz.
£25 and £75.


1400. CHRIST BEFORE PILATE.

  _Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See 45._

This sketch is the original study for the etching of the same subject
done in 1636. It is signed with the artist's name underneath the clock
which is above the arched entrance on the right.


1401. A FRUIT-PIECE.

  _Pieter Snyers_ (Flemish: 1681-1752).

      A painter of fruit and flower pieces, landscapes, portraits,
      and figure subjects of low life; was Director of the Royal
      Academy of Antwerp.

Fowls, cray-fish, artichokes, lobsters, peaches, plums, strawberries,
asparagus, radishes, and peonies--"all represented of natural size
and distributed in picturesque confusion." The artist's signature is
included, as if embroidered on the corner of the tablecloth.


1406. THE ANNUNCIATION.

  _School of Fra Angelico_ (Florentine: 1387-1455). _See 663._

"Through an arched opening behind the Virgin we see a sort of cloister
garth. There are daisies on the sward, and in a pot stands a tall lily.
A similar opening behind the Archangel reveals another part of the
garth, enclosed on all sides by a rose trellis. Beyond the trellis are
visible a hill and a convent resembling that of San Miniato, rows of
cypresses, and more distinct peaks in fuller light. The embroideries,
the angel's plumage, and both the _nimbi_, are represented in real
gold, while the last are incised in radial lines, so that, like the
wings, their brilliance is distinct, and they shimmer in the light. On
the capitals of two of the columns of the cloister the red annulets
upon a silver shield of the Albizzi family are seen" (_Athenæum_).
The composition of this not very attractive picture recalls the
Annunciations by Fra Angelico, at Cortona and in the Madrid Gallery
respectively.


1409. THE MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE.

  _Andrea Cordelle Agii_ (Venetian: School of Bellini).

      This picture is a repetition of one by Andrea Previtali in the
      sacristy of the Church of San Giobbe at Venice, and the painter
      has been supposed to be the same as Previtali. This, however,
      is probably not the case. The present picture is signed (on a
      cartellino) "1504: Andreas Cordelli Agy dissipulus Jovannis
      Bellini pinxit." He similarly describes himself as a pupil
      of John Bellini on a picture in the Poldi Pezzoli Gallery at
      Milan. Judging from his name, "twists and needles," he or his
      father was probably a pedlar (Layard's edition of "Kugler," i.
      334).

"The conjecture that Andrea Previtali is identical with Andrea Cordelle
Agii seems to me," says Morelli, "untenable. Both were fellow-scholars
in the workshop of Giovanni Bellini, and it is undeniable that in
some of their works they closely resemble each other; but this may be
explained by the fact that the one probably copied the cartoons or even
the pictures of the other. The few signed works which I have met with
by Cordelle Agii appear to me, however, to be more refined and lifelike
in expression, and his landscapes are warmer and less vividly green in
tone, than those of Previtali" (_Roman Galleries_, p. 237 _n._). As
a picture by Previtali hangs close by (No. 695), the reader is in a
position to consider the justness of the critic's remarks for himself.


1410. VIRGIN AND CHILD

  _Borgognone_ (Lombard: about 1455-1523). _See 298._

The nimbus which surrounds the Virgin's head is inscribed in gold
with the words AVE. MARIA. GRATIA. PLENA. DOM. The background is
interesting. On the right is no doubt a faithful view of part of the
old façade of the Certosa of Pavia before it was completed. On the
left are other buildings which appear to be part of a convent, with
Carthusian friars walking in front. This picture is earlier in date
than Borgognone's "Two St. Catherines" (298); it is "more rigid in
style and a capital example of the painter's less ambitious work"
(Catalogue of the Burlington Fine Arts Club's Exhibition, 1898, p.
xxxvii.).


1411. A DIPTYCH.

  _Ercole Roberti de' Grandi_ (Ferrarese: 1450-1496). _See 1127._

On the left the Adoration of the Shepherds. There is much natural charm
in the figure of the Virgin bending over the manger. On the right the
dead figure of Christ, with St. Jerome and St. Francis in the middle
distance receiving the stigmata. Very delicately finished.


1412. VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH ST. JOHN.

  _Filippino Lippi_ (Florentine: 1457-1504). _See 293._
  _See also_ (p. xxi)

Formerly ascribed to Botticelli.[250] Notice the beautifully painted
white eglantine and jasmine blossoms in the vase on the balcony. The
youthful St. John is an attractive figure, very characteristic of this
group of painters.


1415. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Gerard Dou_ (Dutch; 1613-1675). _See 192._

"An old inscription on the back of the panel states that this picture
is a portrait of Anna Maria van Schurmann; but it will be observed
that the portrait by Jan Lievens (1095), supposed to represent the
same lady, differs in the colour of the hair, and has other points of
variation, which preclude the possibility of both having been painted
from the same person" (Official Catalogue).


1416. VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH SAINTS.

  _Filippo Mazzola_ (Parmese: died 1505).

      The Mazzola family affords one of the many instances in the
      history of painting of artistic heredity. Filippo's two
      brothers were also painters, and his son was the more famous
      Parmigiano (see under 33). The Mazzoli were much employed
      in Parma, but their work seldom rose above mediocrity.
      By Filippo--called _delle erbette_ from the plants which
      he was fond of introducing into his pictures--there are
      religious-subject pictures to be seen at Parma. But he is best
      known for his portraits, in which the influence of Antonello da
      Messina is to be traced (see Morelli's _German Galleries_, p.
      418). An excellent one in the Brera bears his signature.

This picture is in its original frame, of early _cinque-cento_ pattern,
richly carved, gilt, and painted. A somewhat similar frame has recently
been given to the "Vision of St. Eustace" (1436).


1417. CHRIST'S AGONY IN THE GARDEN.

  _Andrea Mantegna_ (Paduan: 1431-1506). _See 274._

A celebrated picture (painted in 1459 for Giacomo Marcello,
Podestà of Padua), and a specially interesting acquisition to our
Gallery--first, as belonging to an earlier period of the master than
his other important works here; and secondly, for its strong family
likeness to the picture of the same subject by his brother-in-law,
Giovanni Bellini, which, hangs in an adjoining room (No. 726). At
the time when these pictures were painted Giovanni and Andrea were
working at Padua under the influence of Giovanni's father, Jacopo
Bellini (Vasari has some family gossip on this subject, ii. 265);
and the original suggestion for the treatment of the subject in both
pictures appears in Jacopo's sketch-book, now in the British Museum.
A prominent object in the distance (an Italian version of Jerusalem)
is a little gilt equestrian statue, which was evidently suggested by
Donatello's equestrian statue of Gattamelata, still to be seen at
Padua. The foreshortening of the apostles suggests the work of Uccello
(see 583), who is known to have painted in that city. The picture
has been described as "a marvellous combination of the fantastic and
the realistic"; note for curious details the rabbits and storks, and
the cormorant on the withered tree. This picture is more quaint than
Bellini's; but Bellini's is the more original. "Mantegna's," says
Mr. Monkhouse, "exhibits only a strong personal treatment of old
conventions: Bellini's proclaims the dawn of a new world of art. What
was old in the pictures--the Christ kneeling on a little hill, with
the sleepy apostles in foreshortened attitudes in the foreground,
the angelic vision on a cloud, and the suggestion of a neighbouring
city--are common to both pictures. What was new--the fresh observation
of nature for its own sake--is found only in Bellini's. We see this
in the smouldering clouds of sunset, the light thrown on the distant
buildings, the half-shade on the cliffs, the bringing-out of the
figures into something like the real open, sun-illumined air, the
attempt at solution of the problem of the tone of a face and figure
relieved right against the sky" (_In the National Gallery_, 1895, p.
192).


1417a. ILLUMINATED INITIAL LETTER.

The letter D: enclosed within it is painted "The Agony in the Garden,"
copied from the preceding picture by Mantegna. The picture and this
letter were both in the collection of Lord Northbrook.


1418. ST. JEROME IN HIS STUDY.

  _Antonello da Messina_ (Venetian: 1444-1493).

A celebrated little picture, with a long critical history, for as early
as 1529 the writer known as the "_anonimo_ of Morelli" mentions it as
being variously attributed to Van Eyck, to Memlinc, and to Antonello,
while he himself ascribed it tentatively to "Jacometto" (Jacopo de'
Barbari). The influence of the Flemish School is obvious, says Sir
Edward Poynter, "in the Gothic character of the architecture, the
general arrangement of the picture, and the finish of the details. But
the head of the saint has an energy of character highly characteristic
of Antonello, and the buildings in the glimpse of landscape seen
through the window on the left are distinctly Italian in character"
(_The National Gallery_, i. 14). It is interesting to compare this
picture with the version of the same subject commonly ascribed to
Bellini (694). Observe, here, "the lion walking along the cloister,
holding up a suffering paw, and the puss curled up on a platform at
the saint's feet. Evidently this St. Jerome was a lover of animals,
and, like Canon Liddon, more especially of cats" ("The Beasts of the
National Gallery," by Sophia Beale, in _Good Words_, July 1895).


1419. THE LEGEND OF ST. GILES.

  _Unknown_ (Flemish School: 15th Century).
  _See also_ (p. xxi)

      "St. Giles, patron saint of Edinburgh, and of woods, cripples,
      lepers, and beggars, was an Athenian prince, revered for his
      miraculous gifts. Having healed a sick man whom he found in a
      church by laying his cloak over him, and fearing danger to his
      soul from the fame which this event obtained him, he withdrew
      to a solitary cave, where he lived as a hermit, nourished only
      by wild herbs and the milk of a doe which had followed him. One
      day the King of France, hunting near this retreat, shot the
      doe, and, pursuing it, came upon the aged hermit holding in his
      arms the doe, which was pierced by the arrow through his hand.
      The King, seeing he was a man of God, begged forgiveness, and
      wished to persuade St. Giles to return with him; but he refused
      to quit his solitude, and remained in the cave till his death"
      (_Saints and their Symbols_, by E. A. G., 1881, p. 95).

Here we see the saint, clad in hermit's robes, protecting the doe,
which has fled from the hunting party towards him; his right hand is
transfixed by an arrow, intended for the animal. The King kneels to
implore forgiveness. He is attended by a companion, who is supposed
to represent the painter of the picture. Notice the irises in the
foreground, and to the right a plant of mullein, finished with great
delicacy. "Remarkable as an example of extraordinary finish and
enamel-like splendour of colour. Remarkable also for the flood of
even, gay daylight diffused over it, such as makes us think of the
more moderate among recent _plein air_ transcripts from nature. But
the painter shows more of that intense humanity, of that command over
delicate shades of character and facial expression which are the
highest characteristic of the great Netherlandish masters of his time"
(Claude Phillips, in _National Review_, Dec. 1894).


1420. A VIEW IN HAARLEM.

  _Gerrit Berck-Heyde_ (Dutch: 1638-1698).

      Gerrit, and his elder brother, Job, were the sons of a butcher
      at Haarlem. Gerrit was very skilful in lineal perspective,
      and reproduced with remarkable fidelity the most complicated
      architectural views. The brothers worked together a great deal,
      and Job often painted the figures in Gerrit's pictures. "The
      pictures of both brothers are remarkable for a broad style of
      painting, for brilliant sunlight, and careful, but not over
      elaborate, drawing of details, and the figures are invariably
      well grouped" (Official Catalogue).

A view of the painter's favourite subject, the market-place of Haarlem.
The picture is signed, and dated 1674.


1421. A TERRACE SCENE.

  _Jan Steen_ (Dutch: 1626-1679). _See 856._


1422. THE HOLY FAMILY.

  _Eustache Le Sueur_ (French: 1616-1655)

      Le Sueur, sometimes styled "the French Raphael," was the son of
      a wood-carver at Paris, and became one of the original members
      of the French Academy. His works, in spite of the early age
      at which he died, are very numerous. He was assisted in the
      production of them by three brothers and his brothers-in-law.
      Several of his most important pictures are to be seen at the
      Louvre.

This little picture is a good example of the painter's
characteristics--with its somewhat crude colour, but considerable
gracefulness, especially in the figure of the Virgin.


1423. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Jan A. Ravesteijn_ (Dutch: 1572-1657).

      This artist was born at the Hague, where his most important
      works are to be found. He was admitted into the Painters'
      Guild there in 1598. He was a pupil of Frans Hals, and was
      much employed in painting the large groups of portraits--of
      archers, magistrates, etc.--which were in vogue at the time.
      Ravesteijn's groups are somewhat more formal than those of
      Rembrandt, Hals, and Van der Helst, but are full of life and
      character. He knew how to give dignity to his sitters, and his
      pictures are inferior only to those of the great masters just
      mentioned.


1424. TOBIAS AND THE ANGEL.

  _Adam Elsheimer_ (German: 1578-1620). _See 1014._

A favourite subject with this painter. It was etched in 1613 by Count
Gondt, who was the painter's chief benefactor; he purchased some
of Elsheimer's choicest pictures, and engraved seven of them. The
copper-plate of this subject fell into the hands of Rembrandt, and was
partly erased and altered by him into another subject.


1425. PORTRAIT GROUP.

  _Le Nain_ (French: 1588-1648).

      There were three brothers of this name, the sons of a sergeant
      at Laon, who all worked together as painters in Paris, and
      became members of the Academy in 1648, in which year two of
      them died. Mathieu painted historical subjects; he lived
      till 1677. The very interesting and pleasing pictures, such
      as the present one, most generally known as the works of Le
      Nain, were probably painted by the other brothers--Louis and
      Antoine--conjointly. Antoine was born in 1588; Louis in 1593.
      Their works consist of familiar objects and incidents, such
      as the "Peasants" and the "Blacksmith's Forge" in the Louvre;
      they have a direct air of truth and realism, which is very
      remarkable in contrast to the artificial taste by which other
      French painters of the same period were inspired. Another work
      by the brothers may be seen at Dulwich.


1427. THE DEAD CHRIST: A PIETÀ.

  _Hans Baldung_ (German-Swabian: 1476-1545). _See 245._

Signed and dated "Hans Baldung, 1512." The Virgin's attitude is
expressive of intense sorrow. "Her mouth is drawn convulsively down in
the manner usual in the pictures of Burgkmair and the school and epoch
to which he and Baldung belonged. On our right is St. John. Behind the
group is Joseph of Arimathea. Behind, God the Father appears, robed
in blue under a red mantle, and holding across His knees the drooping
corpse of the Redeemer. Clouds form the background, and among them the
Holy Ghost is hovering. The heads of all the figures bear plain nimbi
of metallic gold. The draperies, except the loin-cloth of Christ, are
somewhat tortured in the manner of the German painters of the fifteenth
century. On the front of the balcony in which they are placed are
depicted the donor and his family; in one corner is their escutcheon,
bearing three money bags and a broad bar" (_Athenæum_, Jan. 11, 1895).


1429. THE ROTUNDA AT RANELAGH.

  _Canaletto_ (Venetian: 1697-1768). _See 127._

The interior of the Rotunda in Ranelagh Gardens (at Chelsea), which
were opened as a rival to Vauxhall in 1742, and at once became the
rage. "Ranelagh has totally beat Vauxhall," wrote Walpole in 1744;
"nobody goes anywhere else." "When I first entered Ranelagh," said Dr.
Johnson, "it gave me an expansion and gay sensation in my mind such as
I never experienced anywhere else." Smollett describes it in his novels
as an "enchanted palace." "Ranelagh," said Rogers ("Table-Talk"), "was
a very pleasant place of amusement. There persons of inferior rank
mingled with the highest nobility of Britain. All was so orderly and
still that you could hear the _whisking_ sound of the ladies' trains as
the immense assembly walked round and round the room. If you chose, you
might have tea, which was served up in the neatest equipage possible."
The dining boxes under the arcade on the ground level are shown in the
picture, as well as the orchestra, the musicians, and the numerous
gaily-dressed promenaders. On the back of the original canvas was an
inscription by the artist, recording that the picture was painted in
London in 1754.


1430. ARCHITECTURAL SUBJECT WITH FIGURES.

  _Domenico Beccafumi_ (Sienese: 1486-1551).

      Of this painter there is a very interesting account in Vasari.
      His surname was adopted from his patron, on whose estate
      Domenico's father was a labourer. Like Giotto, Domenico was
      observed one day drawing on the ground, while minding his
      father's sheep, and his master sent him to school and made an
      artist of him. His style was first formed on that of Perugino,
      whose pictures in Siena he copied. In 1510 he went to Rome to
      study the works of Michael Angelo and Raphael; but returning
      to Siena in 1512, he became a close imitator of Bazzi (1144),
      who had recently settled in the city. Unlike Bazzi, Domenico
      was (adds Vasari) "most orderly and well conducted, lived as
      it beseemed a Christian to do, and passed the greater part
      of his time alone." "It will nevertheless sometimes happen,"
      adds Vasari, "that such as are called good fellows and merry
      companions are more sought after than are the virtuous and
      upright." In the matter of artistic commissions, however,
      Beccafumi was well employed, in painting both altar-pieces for
      churches and frescoes of classical subjects for the houses of
      wealthy citizens. Some of the latter still remain _in situ_,
      while the Accademia contains Beccafumi's best works in the
      other sort. It was he who executed the mosaics of light and
      dark marbles which form the pavement of the choir of the Duomo.
      He also practised sculpture and did eight angels in bronze for
      the Duomo. He hastened his death, says Vasari, "by labouring
      day and night at his castings of metal which he would also
      finish and polish himself, working entirely alone, and refusing
      to accept any assistance whatever." He occupied his leisure
      time in cultivating a small property outside the city gates. He
      could not work, he told Vasari, removed from the air of Siena.

A picture corresponding in general character to several described by
Vasari. It is probably intended as a fantastic treatment of the visit
of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon, or of Esther before Ahasuerus.


1431. THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST.

  _Ascribed to Perugino_ (Umbrian: 1446-1523). _See 288._

Around this little picture of the Umbrian School, bought by Sir Edward
Poynter at Rome in 1894, a fierce battle of the critics has raged. Sir
Edward's own description may first be cited:--"A perfectly genuine
work by a scholar of Perugino, probably done in his studio, and, in my
opinion, possibly by the young Raphael. The most characteristic point,
besides the beautiful painting of the figure of the Saviour, is the
drawing of the hands, which is precisely Raphael's. On the other hand,
the heads are not specially Raphaelesque, nor is the colour as pure
and transparent as is usual even in his early work; at the same time,
such characteristics as do not agree with what we know of his work
might possibly be due to its being a youthful performance. The painting
of the trees is quite peculiar, and different from the treatment to
be found in the works of Perugino, or, indeed, of any work of the
school that I had seen. Some two or three years afterwards I saw the
predella painting of 'St. John Preaching' by Raphael, belonging to the
Marquis of Lansdowne, and was very interested to find in it the same
treatment of the leaves of the trees--that is to say, that, instead
of the minute and delicate sprays of foliage, so characteristic of
Perugino's own work and of, so far as I know, most of his followers,
the trees have only a few sprays of large and freely painted leaves."
According to many of Sir Edward's critics, the picture is a "detestable
little production"; while one of them ascribes it, as a work of the
nineteenth century, to Micheli, "a maker of old masters." (See a
copious correspondence in the _Athenæum_ and the _Times_, during March
and April, 1907).


1432. THE MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE.

  _Gerard David_ (Early Flemish: 1460-1523). _See 1045._

This picture (formerly ascribed to Hugo van der Goes) was, like No.
1045, painted for the Collegiate Church of St. Donatian at Bruges.
Until the end of the last century it adorned the altar of St.
Catherine in that church. The details of the picture are carried out
with marvellous care and finish, and the whole displays the utmost
perfection of execution. The expression of the figures, is, however,
hardly so animated or idealised as in No. 1045. But "the Canon's
intelligent head is admirably modelled and painted, and the figure
of St. Catherine is executed with rare perfection. The jewellery,
stuff, and draperies are all rendered with David's usual skill; while
the background, with its rich vegetation, vigorously coloured trees,
and picturesque buildings, is hardly surpassed by that of any of his
other pictures." The scene of the mystical marriage (for the subject,
see under 249) is laid in the emblematic walled garden ("a garden
inclosed is my sister, my spouse"), surrounded by a vineyard (in
which is an angel gathering grapes). On the right of the picture are
seated St. Barbara, holding an open book, and St. Mary Magdalene with
the vase of precious ointment in her lap. In front of St. Catherine
kneels the donor of the picture, Richard de Visch van der Capelle,
Canon and Cantor of the Church; he is accompanied by his greyhound, on
whose collar is a shield bearing the Canon's arms. Before him, on the
floor, lie a breviary of blue velvet and his precentor's staff. The
workmanship of this staff is a good instance of the painter's minute
precision. The staff is surmounted by a group representing the Holy
Trinity adored by a monk and a cardinal. It was painted from a staff
presented to the church in 1338, and the picture precisely corresponds
to a description of the staff, to be found in an old inventory of the
church property (see authorities cited in the Official Catalogue from
Mr. Weale's description in the _Academy_, xiv. p. 391).

The picture was exhibited at Paris in 1881 under the name of Hugo van
der Goes, and was sold for 54,100 francs. It ultimately passed into the
possession of Mr. Lyne Stephens, by whom in 1895 it was bequeathed to
the National Gallery.


1433. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Unknown_ (Flemish School: 15th Century).

Notice the transparent starched muslin head-dress which, coming down as
low as the eyebrows and covering the ears, yet allows the forehead and
ears, and a high cap of gold and white brocade, to be seen through its
thin texture.


1434. A BETROTHAL.

  _Velazquez_ (Spanish: 1599-1660). _See 197._
  _See also_ (p. xxi)

An unfinished picture once in the possession of Sir Edwin Landseer,
and presented to the Gallery by Lord Savile, who has given a very
interesting surmise of the subject: "It is evidently the representation
of a betrothal in a private family, probably that of Velazquez himself.
If this surmise be correct, the principal male figure would be
Velazquez as a Knight of the Order of Santiago, the red cross of which,
though half concealed, is seen on his cloak; the mother presenting
her child would be his daughter, the wife of the artist Del Mazo, his
pupil and son-in-law, and the girl, their daughter, the grandchild of
Velazquez. The foreground is occupied on the right by a half-length
figure of the poet Quevedo, with a huge pair of horn spectacles, as he
is represented in his portrait by Velazquez at Apsley House, though
here he is a much older man. He was a great friend of Velazquez, and
in this picture may represent the witness to the betrothal of the
artist's grandchild. On the right is a negro, probably Juan Pareja,
the favourite slave of Velazquez, who is conveying a basket of fruit
to his young mistress. Velazquez himself is waiting, pen in hand, for
the 'promesso sposo,' who, though not shown in the picture, may be
entering the room by the portière which an attendant is raising; but
he is seen by the little bride elect, who waves a salute to him with
the flower in her hand. [Contrast, as a pretty little incident, the dog
who is running towards the door and barking at the stranger.] It is
not surprising that a painting of this unusual character should give
rise to doubt as to the correctness of its attribution, and it has been
suggested that it is the work of Del Mazo, the pupil of Velazquez; but
if that artist had been commissioned to paint the portrait of a knight
of Santiago, his sitter would scarcely have been satisfied with the
scanty indication of that celebrated order shown in this picture. If,
however, as I believe, the knight of Santiago represents Velazquez
himself, the half-hidden cross of that order assumes an aspect that
may have an important bearing on the questions of the authorship
of the picture, the date of the work, and the cause of its being
unfinished. Stirling-Maxwell, in his admirable and exhaustive _Annals
of the Artists of Spain_, relates that Philip IV. in 1658 conferred on
Velazquez the habit of the Order of Santiago; but it was not for many
months later that the artist was invested with its insignia, owing
to the formalities required by the Order to prove his pedigree. The
King, impatient at this delay, sent for the President of the Order
and the documents connected with the case, and having looked at them
his Majesty said to the President, 'Place on record that the evidence
satisfies me.' The half-concealed red cross of Santiago in the picture
was sufficient for Velazquez to show that he was entitled to the Order,
but, with the modesty and conscientiousness that distinguished him, he
did not design the insignia on his breast, where it is worn, apparently
not feeling justified in so doing until after his investiture. This,
however, did not occur till November 1659. It is evident, therefore,
that the picture must have been painted in 1658, after he had received
the habit, but not the insignia, of the Order. That the picture was
left unfinished was doubtless due to the onerous duties with which
Velazquez was charged by the King in preparing the meeting on the
Bidassoa, in 1660, of the French and Spanish Courts, to celebrate the
nuptials of Louis XIV. and the Infanta Maria Teresa. These duties
doubled the official fatigues and shortened the life of Velazquez, who
died shortly after his return to Madrid in August of the same year.
There is, therefore, good reason to believe that the picture in the
National Gallery is the last ever painted by Velazquez" (letter to the
_Times_, May 11, 1895).


1436. THE VISION OF ST. EUSTACE.

  _Vittore Pisano_ (Veronese: 1380-1452). _See 776._

"The minute but unobtrusive finish of the picture is," says the
Official Catalogue, "astonishing. Of the coats of the horse, dogs,
stag, and other wild animals introduced every hair is drawn; and of the
wild birds, every feather; nor are they less remarkable for the beauty
of the drawing and the admirable character displayed, in which it may
be truly said this painter has never been excelled. Numerous studies
of animals of the highest beauty are to be found in collections of
drawings throughout Europe, some of them evidently done in preparation
for this picture." St. Eustace, whose name before his conversion was
Placidus, was a Roman soldier, a captain of the guards in the reign of
the Emperor Trajan. He was a great lover of the chase, and "one day,
while hunting in the forest, he saw before him a stag of marvellous
beauty. He pursued it eagerly, and the stag fled before him, and
ascended a high rock. Then Placidus, looking up, beheld, between the
horns of the stag, a cross of radiant light, and on it the image of the
crucified Redeemer; and being astonished and dazzled by this vision, he
fell on his knees, and a voice, which seemed to come from the crucifix,
cried to him, and said, 'Placidus! why dost thou pursue me? I am
Christ, whom thou hast hitherto served without knowing me. Dost thou
now believe?' And Placidus fell with his face to the earth, and said,
'Lord, I believe!' And when he looked up again the wondrous vision had
departed. And he returned to his house and was baptized with his wife
and children" (Mrs. Jameson: _Sacred and Legendary Art_, 1850, p. 466).
For a representation of the very similar legend of St. Hubert, see No.
783. This beautiful picture (from Lord Ashburnham's Collection) has
been placed in a very elaborate frame in the Italian style: compare No.
1416.


1437. THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY GHOST.

  _Barnaba da Modena_ (painted about 1365).

A specimen, very well preserved, of the Giottesque period of Italian
art. The painter, a native of Modena, appears to have worked chiefly in
Piedmont and Pisa. Examples of his work may be seen in the Galleries of
Pisa, Turin, Frankfort, and Berlin. It is pointed out as noticeable,
in the Official Catalogue, that the drapery of the Virgin Mary is
treated in the hieratic or Byzantine manner, while that of the Apostles
is in the naturalistic manner of Giotto. For a similar instance of
transitional treatment, see Duccio's "Transfiguration," No. 1330.


1438. HEAD OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST.

  _Unknown_ (Lombard School: 16th Century).

A head of great beauty and much pathos of expression. An inscription on
the background gives the date of the picture, 1511.


1439. FISHING IN THE RIVER.

  _Salomon Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1600-1670). _See 1344._

An early work. Signed, and dated 1631. "The sky is partly covered with
soft, gray clouds, and the whole scene gives the impression of a still
and peaceful summer's day."


1440. ST. DOMINIC.

  _Giovanni Bellini_ (Venetian: 1427-1516). _See 189._
  _See also_ (p. xxi)

The portrait of a monk (on the parapet is an inscription recording
that it is a likeness of Brother Theodore of Urbino) in the character
of St. Dominic. He wears the Dominican robe, and the name of the saint
is inscribed on the label of the book which he holds, and carries the
usual attributes of the saint, the lily and a book (on the label of
which are the words "Sanctus Dominicus"). The inscription is dated
1515, so that if genuine this must be one of the painter's last works.
No. 808 is another portrait of a monk ascribed to the same painter--in
character as one of the saints (St. Peter Martyr). Signor Frizzoni
attributes both of them to Gentile Bellini.


1441. THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.

  _Perugino_ (Umbrian: 1446-1523). _See 288._

This fresco from the church at Fontignano, near Castello della Pieve,
was left unfinished when the painter died there in 1523, in his 77th
year; it is believed to be his last work (_see_ Vasari, ii. 323). The
fresco was transferred to canvas and removed in 1843. It was purchased
in 1862 from Mr. Spence of Florence, by the South Kensington Museum.
"The hand had not lost its cunning, and there is much of the early
sweetness in this huge fresco. There is the charm of its faded blues
and purples, the haze of its shimmering sunshine, and the tender
reverence of the kneeling figures" (G. C. Williamson: _Perugino_, o, p.
110).


1442. SHIPS IN A GALE.

  _Bakhuizen_ (Dutch: 1631-1708). _See 204._


1443. INTERIOR OF A CHURCH.

  _H. Steenwyck_ (Flemish: 1580-1649). _See 1132._

A funeral service is being celebrated in the nave, while in the
foreground is a christening procession.


1444. PEASANTS WARMING THEMSELVES.

  _Gerard von Honthorst_ (Dutch: 1590-1656).

      This artist went early in life to Rome, where he acquired the
      style of Caravaggio (see 172). "His rude contrasts of opaque
      shade and brilliant light, his luminous effects produced by
      the light of a torch or flambeau, and the naturalism of his
      works, caused him to be much sought after in Italy, where
      this style was in fashion," and acquired for him the name of
      "Gherardo della Notte." He returned to Utrecht, his birthplace,
      in 1623, and in 1628 was commissioned by Charles I. to decorate
      the palace of Whitehall. While in England he also painted the
      portraits of the Court and many of the nobility. Several of his
      portraits are to be seen in the National Portrait Gallery.


1445, 1446. STUDIES OF FLOWERS.

  _Rachel Ruysch_ (Dutch: 1664-1750).

      One of the few female painters represented in the Gallery.
      Rachel Ruysch was the daughter of a professor of anatomy, and
      began to study art at an early age. She married Julian Pool,
      a portrait-painter, and had a large family. She continued the
      practice of her art until she reached an advanced age, always
      signing her pictures with her maiden name. Notwithstanding
      her industry, the number of her pictures is somewhat small,
      and it was jokingly said in her time that "she produced more
      children than pictures." The labour she devoted to her work was
      astonishing; two pictures alone are said to have occupied her
      for seven years; and these she bestowed on one of her daughters
      as a marriage portion. She was admirable in her manner of
      grouping as well as in pencilling; each flower is relieved by
      its neighbour, and all are kept in perfect harmony. She was
      fond of introducing among her flowers the insects peculiar to
      them (notice the butterfly in 1446); and these she depicted
      with microscopic accuracy. "Had her colouring been less cold,
      she would certainly have equalled her illustrious rival, Van
      Huysum" (Bryan's _Dictionary of Painters_, and Havard's _Dutch
      School_, p. 268).


1447. A HUNTING PARTY.

  _Adam Frans van der Meulen_ (Flemish: 1632-1694).

      This painter, a native of Brussels, had a great facility
      in battlepieces. Some of these found their way to France,
      and attracted the notice of the painter Le Brun. On his
      recommendation Van der Meulen was invited to the French
      Court, and was at first employed on designs for the Gobelins
      tapestries. Afterwards he accompanied Louis XIV. on his
      campaigns, and, brush in hand, was present at all the principal
      sieges and battles of that monarch. These he afterwards
      painted for the King; he also depicted many hunting scenes
      and cavalcades. His works are to be seen at the Louvre and
      Versailles.

The present picture (signed, and dated 1662) shows us some such scene
in the life of the Court. The suite is bareheaded, and it is clearly
some personage of importance--possibly Louis XIV. himself--who is
seated at the window of the carriage. The background of open country
with blue distance is very pleasantly rendered.


1448. A VILLAGE GREEN IN FRANCE.

  _François S. Bonvin_ (French: 1817-1888).

      A painter of still life and interiors as well as of landscape;
      for thirty years a constant exhibitor at the Salon; given the
      Order of the Legion of Honour in 1870.

Signed, and dated 1869, at Verberie--a pleasantly-situated spot in the
department of the Oise, eleven miles north-east of Senlis.


1449. CARDINAL RICHELIEU.

  _Philippe de Champaigne_ (French: 1602-1674). _See 798._

"The central head in No. 798 was evidently used as a study for this
portrait. The Cardinal, in the crimson silk robes of his office, with
the cross of the Order of St. Louis hung by a blue ribbon round his
neck, stands as if just risen from the chair of state behind him."


1450. THE HOLY FAMILY.

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

"In the mixture of the Venetian element," it has been said, "with
the severe forms and masses of the Michelangelesque feeling consists
the charm of Sebastiano's best works" (Layard, ii. 562). The "superb
composition" before us, says Sir Edward Poynter, "shows the influence
of Michelangelo in every line." It was formerly in the collection
of the late Mr. Thomas Baring, and was purchased from the Earl of
Northbrook in 1895. It was Mr. Baring's favourite picture in his
collection.


1451. INTERIOR OF A CHURCH.

  _Gerrit Berck-Heyde_ (Dutch: 1638-1698). _See 1420._

The nave of a Gothic church in Holland, during sermon-time (the
preacher is in the pulpit against one of the columns on the right).
The women sit on chairs; the men in seats raised in tiers. Some stand
listening to the sermon, and an elderly man on the left is warning
two children to be quiet. In the centre a boy is playing with a dog,
to which a woman directs the attention of the child with her. On the
pavement is the artist's signature, dated 1673.


1454. A GONDOLA.

  _Francesco Guardi_ (Venetian: 1712-1793). _See 210._


1455. THE CIRCUMCISION.

  _Giovanni Bellini_ (Venetian: 1426-1516). _See 189._

A picture of Bellini's earlier period, the original of numerous
versions and copies in private and public galleries, presented to the
National Gallery by one of the trustees, the Earl of Carlisle. The
Virgin is "one of those magnificent Venetian women whose _morbidezza_
profoundly moved the painters of their country, marked by a grave,
suave, and restful expression, instinct with unconscious dignity; this
is the countenance of a Venetian woman to the life, not over refined,
but full of repose, the repose of vigour and conscious strength,
not the languor of debility" (_Athenæum_). The diaper of the High
Priest's robe contains figures of antelopes, a curious instance of the
straightforward mode of the artist, who, no doubt, employed as a model
a veritable robe, and one of Oriental or Sicilian origin. Embroideries
of this category were frequently used in Venice of old. The same
Oriental embroidery is to be seen in pictures by other Venetian artists
in which the High Priest is introduced.


1456. VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH ANGELS.

  _Unknown_ (Italian School: 15th Century).

Below is a portion of the original frame with three small quatrefoil
medallions in which are half-length figures of the Saviour, the Virgin,
and St. John. The picture, which was presented to the Gallery by one of
the trustees, Mr. J.P. Heseltine, is ascribed to the school of Gentile
da Fabriano (about 1360-1440), "the Umbrian Fra Angelico," whose
delight in splendour and gold ornaments is so naïve.


1457. CHRIST DRIVING THE TRADERS OUT OF THE TEMPLE.

  _Domenico Theotocopuli_ (Spanish: 1548-1625). _See 1122._


1459. THE WINE CONTRACT.

  _Gerhard van den Eeckhout_ (Dutch: 1621-1674).

      This painter, the son of a goldsmith at Amsterdam, was one
      of the first to enter Rembrandt's school. He was a favourite
      pupil, and lived in close intimacy with the master. His
      biblical subjects--examples of which are at the Louvre, the
      Hague, and Amsterdam--were painted in close imitation of
      Rembrandt. He owed to his master not only his subjects, but
      their figures, costumes, and attitudes; he could not, however,
      borrow Rembrandt's warmth and intensity. His portraits are more
      successful.

A group of the four chiefs of the Wine Guild of Amsterdam seated in
conversation over some deeds. The picture is signed, and dated 1657.


1461. ST. SEBASTIAN.

  _Matteo di Giovanni_ (Sienese: 1435-1495). _See 1155._

This and No. 247 by the same artist are, says Sir Edward Poynter,
"excellent examples of _tempera_ painting of the fifteenth century,
in good preservation and unvarnished." The panel is surrounded by the
original gilt mouldings.


1462. SEA-PIECE WITH SHIPPING.

  _Hendrik Dubbels_ (Dutch: 1620-1676).

      This painter, "the master of Bakhuizen (see under 204), was one
      of the first, after the success of his pupil was confirmed, to
      adopt his subjects and to copy his manner" (Havard: _The Dutch
      School_, p. 256). His works, however, bear little resemblance
      to Bakhuizen's: they are more like Van de Cappelle. Many of his
      pictures are to be found in private collections. The present
      picture, with its luminous atmospheric effects, is an excellent
      example. Observe on the leeboard of one of the barges the
      signature, I. H. D., possibly Jan Hendrik Dubbels. There were
      three painters of the name, Hendrik, Dirk, and Jan.


1465. CHRIST RISING FROM THE TOMB.

  _Gaudenzio Ferrari_ (Lombard: 1481-1549).

      A welcome addition to the Gallery, as being the work
      (though not a specially important work) of a great and most
      indefatigable painter not previously represented. Gaudenzio
      was a native of Valduggia (in the Val Sesia); his father was
      a painter; his mother's surname was Vinzio, and in his early
      work he often signed his pictures after her, "Gaudentius
      Vincius." He passed his life exclusively in Piedmont and
      Lombardy, where nearly all his works are still to be found--at
      Vercelli, Novara, Saronno, and Milan. The most important of
      them are at Varallo, on the Sacro Monte and in the church at
      its foot. In some of the chapels on the Sacro Monte he not only
      painted the frescoes in the background but also executed the
      terra-cotta figures, thus carrying out the scheme of uniting
      painting and sculpture in a single design. His "Crucifixion
      Chapel," the most important of his works in this kind, has on
      this account been described as "the most daring among Italian
      works of art." Gaudenzio, who was nearly contemporary with
      Luini, first studied at Milan in the school of Stefano Scotto
      (whose portrait he is believed to have introduced more than
      once in his work at Varallo). The story that he visited Rome
      and made the acquaintance of Raphael rests on no authority,
      and probably arose from a certain similarity in his works to
      the charm of Raphael. But this is a similarity, not of what is
      called "influence," but of age and temperament. "The influence
      of Perugino or of Raphael," says Morelli, "is not more and
      not less perceptible in Ferrari's paintings than in those of
      nearly all the great masters of that happy period, generally
      called the golden age of Italian art, during which Gaudenzio
      and Luini held much the same place in their own school as
      Raphael does in the Umbrian, Cavazzola (Morando) and Carotto
      in the Veronese, Garofalo and Dosso in the Ferrarese, and Fra
      Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto in the Florentine. Gaudenzio,
      it is true, has not the grace of Luini, neither are his works
      so perfect in execution as those of his rival; but take him
      for all in all, as regards inventive genius, dramatic life,
      and picturesqueness, he stands far above Luini. In his hot
      haste Ferrari often loses his balance, and becomes quaint and
      affected; many of his larger compositions, too, are overcrowded
      with figures; but in his best works he is inferior to very few
      of his contemporaries, and occasionally, as in some of those
      groups of men and women in the great 'Crucifixion' at Varallo,
      he might challenge a comparison with Raphael himself" (_German
      Galleries_, p. 441). The best and fullest account of Gaudenzio,
      in English, is to be found in Mr. Samuel Butler's interesting
      work on Varallo, entitled _Ex Voto_ (Trübner, 1888).

Christ, holding the resurrection banner in His hand, rises from a
marble tomb. The painter, who was a child of the mountains, gives us a
background of blue hills. The picture was the centre compartment of an
altar-piece in a church at Magianico, near Lecco, on the Lake of Como.
This composition was copied with variations by Gaudenzio's follower
Giuseppe Giovenone in a picture now at Turin.


1466. THE WALK TO EMMAUS.

  _Lelio Orsi_ (Parmese: 1511-1586).

      This painter, highly esteemed in his own day and of
      considerable talent, has remained less known than many others
      of inferior merit--a fact which is due, as Lanzi observes
      (ii. 357), to his having divided his time between Reggio and
      Novellara, comparatively obscure towns in the Emilia. He was
      born at Reggio, and was much employed there by the Gonzagi. He
      is supposed to have been a pupil of Correggio, whose works he
      is known to have copied, and of whom he was a personal friend.
      In 1546 he was banished for some unknown offence, and was not
      permitted to return to Reggio till 1552. During these years
      he settled at Novellara, where again he was employed by the
      Gonzagas. He must also have visited Rome, and studied the works
      of Michael Angelo. Most of Orsi's frescoes have perished. Some
      of his pictures are in the Gallery at Modena. He was celebrated
      in his day no less as an architect than as a painter.

There is an element of picturesqueness and almost modern romanticism in
this picture. Christ and the disciples wear broad-brimmed hats and the
dress of Italian peasants (_cf._ No. 753).


1468. THE CRUCIFIXION.

  _Spinello Aretino_ (Tuscan: about 1333-1410). _See 581._
  _See also_ (p. xxi)

A picture, some 500 years old, in excellent preservation, retaining
its bright colours and the varied expressions of the faces. It is in
its original frame, surmounted by a Gothic canopy. Two upright panels
on each side contain figures of St. John the Baptist and St. Paul
(left), St. James the Greater and St. Bartholomew (right). In circular
medallions below are the Virgin and Child, with saints.


1469. STILL LIFE.

  _W. K. Heda_ (Dutch: 1594-1678)

      One of the painters "of the kitchen and dining-room--painters
      who devoted themselves to painting copper and silver vessels,
      pottery, and porcelain, modest saucepans, crystal cups, glass
      bowls, and goblets of chased silver. The first to cultivate
      this new style of still life was Willem Klaasz Heda. He was
      born at Haarlem. He was a clever and careful painter, and must
      have left behind him a considerable number of works; but,
      nevertheless, his pictures are excessively rare. They generally
      consist of a carved silver cup, a plate, and a cut lemon--three
      subjects which the painter rendered with marvellous
      truthfulness, the whole surrounded by a few accessories rising
      out of a brown background" (Havard: _The Dutch School_, p. 272).


1470. A BATTLE SCENE.

  _J. Weier_ (German: 17th Century).

      This picture is signed I. Weier, and dated 1645. It may be
      either by Jacob Weier, of Hamburg, who died in 1670; or by
      Johann Matthias Weier, of the same town, who was a pupil of
      Wouwerman, and died, a very old man, in 1690.


1471. THE PICNIC ("MARIENDA CAMPESTRE").

  _Francisco Goya_ (Spanish: 1746-1828).

      This painter--of greater genius and of a more national spirit,
      says Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, than any his century
      produced--was the son of humble parents. Until the age of 16
      he lived without any knowledge of art, when his passion for
      painting was awakened by a monk of Santa Fé, near Saragossa,
      after which he was admitted into the studio of José Luxan
      Martinez, who had been educated in Italy. He distinguished
      himself at this time, not so much in the studio as in the
      streets, in the quarrels of painters and confraternities,
      sometimes ending in bloodshed. At Madrid, to which city he
      afterwards escaped, his mode of life appears to have been
      anything but that of an orderly citizen. Being a good musician,
      and gifted with a voice, he sallied forth nightly, serenading
      the caged beauties of the capital, with whom he seems to have
      been a general favourite, and whose portraits he painted. In
      consequence of a street brawl in Madrid he fled to Italy, in
      company with a party of bull-fighters, and resided at Rome,
      where he fraternised with Louis David. In 1774 he returned
      to Spain, married, and settled down to his profession. He
      soon attracted the notice of Mengs, the King's painter, by
      some designs which he executed for the royal manufactory of
      tapestry, and became a popular artist of that capital, and a
      prime favourite with its fashionable society. In 1789 he was
      appointed painter-in-ordinary to Charles IV., a post which
      he continued to hold under Ferdinand VII. He was so largely
      employed that he was able to maintain a fine villa near Madrid,
      where he entertained in the grand style. Among distinguished
      persons who sat to him was the Duke of Wellington, but on his
      making a remark which raised the artist's choler, Goya seized
      a plaster cast and hurled it at the Duke's head. The artist's
      declining years were spent in retirement at Bordeaux, where he
      died at the age of 82.

      "Goya's earlier life indicated," says W. B. Scott, "the
      character of his painting--bizarre and wild, with a gleam of
      infernal splendour in his choice of beauty. He was an inventor,
      and gives us the most vivid and novel sensations, although
      he serves us with vinegar as well as wine." "Much that was
      bizarre and tumultuous, the strangeness of charm, a certain
      curious and sombre side of beauty, the sense of the strength
      of a personality, the reflection of extravagant gaiety, or
      excessive horror, Goya was able to render in a manner that had
      never been seen before" (_Goya_, by W. Rothenstein: 1900). He
      was in no way the slave to the technicalities of the studio
      or academical rules. In sacred subjects, which he painted
      by no means _con amore_, he affects the hard style of David
      and his French followers. But it was otherwise in those more
      congenial works in which his hand spoke as his fancy prompted,
      and in which he poured forth the gaiety of his art or the gall
      of his sarcasm. There the daubing boldness of the execution
      rivals the coarseness of the idea or the rudeness of the jest.
      His colours were laid on as often with sticks, sponges, or
      dish-clouts as with the brush. "Smearing his canvas with
      paint," says Gautier of him, "as a mason plasters a wall, he
      would add the delicate touches of sentiment with a dash of
      his thumb." So dexterous was he in turning all materials to
      artistic account that during morning visits to his friends he
      would take the sandbox from the inkstand, and, strewing the
      contents on the table, amuse them with caricatures traced in
      an instant by his ready finger. His versatility is proverbial;
      in addition to numerous oil paintings he executed many crayon
      sketches, engravings, and etchings. It is by the latter that he
      is perhaps best known. "The Caprices" are the most surprising,
      showing humanity in all the stages of brutality and ugliness,
      with a _mélange_ of beauty and demonology quite unexampled.
      (W.B. Scott, _The Spanish School_; Bryan's _Dictionary of
      Painters_; and Stirling-Maxwell, _Annals of the Artists of
      Spain_.) The three following pictures are representative of
      Goya's several styles--scenes of country life, demoniacal
      fancies, and portraiture.

From the collection of the Duke of Ossuna at Madrid. Théophile Gautier
described Goya--in the language of hyperbole--as "a combination of
Watteau and Rembrandt," and in this picture we have a Watteau-like
subject, treated, however, in a more grotesque fashion than that of the
charming French painter of rural _fêtes_.


1472. "THE BEWITCHED."

  _Francisco Goya_ (Spanish: 1746-1828). _See 1471._

A scene from a play ("El hechizado por fuerza"), showing a player on
the stage, dressed as a padre in complete black, and in the act of
pouring oil into a lamp which is held by an obsequious demon, while a
team of ghostly and affrighted mules are rearing in the background.
Goya, who has been called the Hogarth of Spain, specially delighted in
satirising the clergy, whose enchantments and incantations he parodied,
and whom he was fond of portraying in the form of asses or apes.


1473. PORTRAIT OF DOÑA ISABEL CORBO DE PORCEL.

  _Francisco Goya_ (Spanish: 1746-1828). _See 1471._

"The lady was evidently a plump and rosy voluptuous woman, having
large and liquid eyes with much dilated pupils, as well as coarse
and full lips, and wearing her loose brown tresses about her eyes
and ears, while a black mantilla fell from a lofty comb upon her
shoulders. It is obvious--and this accounts for the lady's flushed
carnations and glittering pupils, not frequent elements in Goya's
work--that she prepared herself for sitting, not only by blacking her
eyelids with kohl, but using belladonna to dilate her eyes, and rouge
for her cheeks" (_Athenæum_, July 4, 1896). This portrait, says Sir
Edward Poynter, "is perhaps as good an example as could be found of
the brilliancy of execution and vivid portrayal of character which
characterise Goya at his best."


1476. JUPITER AND SEMELE.

  _Andrea Schiavone_ (Venetian: 1522-1582).

      Andrea Meldolla, called Il Schiavone (from his birthplace in
      Dalmatia, the country of the Slaves), was born of poor parents,
      and died, we are told, "after a life of much suffering as
      well as labour"--his works, by which the dealers enriched
      themselves, barely supplying him with the means of existence.
      He was employed at very small remuneration to paint the outside
      of houses and panels for furniture. It is said that he was
      rescued from obscurity by Titian. He was a good colourist, and
      had considerable imagination. "The colouring of Schiavone,"
      says Zanetti, "was much admired by Tintoret, who kept a
      painting by that artist in his studio and advised others to
      do the same." Among the illustrious painters who followed
      Tintoret's advice was our own Lord Leighton, from whose
      collection the present picture was bought.

The picture illustrates the myth which told how Jupiter came to Semele,
whom he loved, attended by clouds, lightning, and thunderbolts. This
panel was doubtless painted, as described above, for some piece of
furniture.


1478. THE CRUCIFIXION.

  _Giovanni Mansueti_ (Venetian: born about 1450).

      Of the life of this painter little is known. The registers of
      San Giovanni, Venice, tell us that he was lame; and by his own
      authority we learn that he was a pupil of Giovanni Bellini,
      and a believer in the miracle of the Cross, which took place
      in 1474, and forms the subject of a picture by him, now in
      the Academy of Venice. His pictures in that collection are
      interesting as illustrating Venetian costume and architecture,
      and Ruskin finds "much that is delightful in them." Mansueti's
      figures, says Kugler (i. 332), are short and stumpy, and he
      lacks the variety of expression and action of Gentile Bellini,
      and the brilliancy of colour and fancy of Carpaccio.

This picture--which is not a very ambitious or characteristic
illustration of the painter--gives a symbolic representation of the
Crucifixion. "In front of an architectural screen--on the right and
left of which is an open tabernacle in sculptured stone, enclosing,
instead of the usual statue of the Virgin or a saint, an angel singing,
and holding an instrument of the Passion of our Saviour--lie the spear,
and the sponge upon the reed. Between these is a Majesty of the usual
type, the flesh of the Redeemer being, doubtless owing to the partial
fading of the carnations or the fact of the under-paint coming through,
more greenish and opaque than the Venetian artists, especially the
school of Bellini, affected. At the foot of the group the Magdalen
kneels in the act of kissing the Saviour's feet. On her left stands the
Virgin, and on the same side are two men, representing, of course, the
Magi and the shepherds who attended the nativity of our Lord. On our
right stand SS. John the Baptist and Peter, in front of whom kneels a
man who holds the pincers as an implement of the Passion. The picture,
as becomes its origin, is bright in colour as well as in its effect and
local tints, very carefully and almost laboriously as well as timidly
drawn; the architecture would not discredit Peter Neeffs" (_Athenæum_,
24th October 1896). The picture is signed, and dated 1492.


1479. A WINTER SCENE ON THE ICE.

  _Hendrik van Avercamp_ (Dutch: 1586-1663). _See 1346._

A winter scene such as Mr. Pater describes in his _Imaginary Portraits_
(p. 91), with "all the delicate poetry together with all the delicate
comfort of the frosty season," in "the leafless branches, the furred
dresses of the skaters, the warmth of the red-brick house fronts, and
the gleam of pale sunlight."


1481. A PHILOSOPHER.

  _Cornelis Pietersz Bega_ (Dutch: 1620-1664).

      This painter, who lived and died at Haarlem, was the son of
      a sculptor and a pupil of Adrian van Ostade. "Though," says
      Havard (p. 148), "a more finished draughtsman, with more
      regard for grace of form and for the beauty of his figures,
      in all other respects he was very inferior to Ostade. When we
      notice his dry and heavy execution, his ruddy flesh-colouring,
      and his opaque shadows, we are surprised that he should have so
      far neglected the examples placed before him."

This picture, executed throughout with extreme care and finish, is
signed, and dated 1663.


1489, 1490. PORTRAITS OF VENETIAN SENATORS.

  (_Venetian School_: 16th Century.)

Transferred from the South Kensington Museum, where the portraits were
attributed to Tintoret.


1493. LANDSCAPE, WITH VIEW OF THE CARRARA MOUNTAINS.

  _G. Costa_ (Italian: born 1826).

      Giovanni Costa, Professor in the Florentine Academy of Fine
      Arts, is distinguished alike as a painter and a patriot. He
      fought in the Venetian campaign of 1848, was a follower of
      Mazzini, in 1853 joined the Piedmontese regiment of lancers
      known as the Aosta Cavalleggieri, served on Garibaldi's staff
      at Mentana, and in 1870 fought his way through the streets
      of Rome at the head of the Italian army, and was the first
      to enter the Capitol. This ended his military career; but
      he afterwards served on the Municipal Council of Rome and
      interested himself specially in the prevention of inundations
      of the Tiber. It was in 1852 that Costa first began the study
      of landscape painting, in which he was destined to become the
      greatest ornament of the modern Italian School. His home was
      in the Alban Hills, near Rome, and afterwards at Florence,
      where in 1859 he inaugurated the "open-air school" in Italy.
      In 1864 he returned to Rome, and in 1870 was appointed to
      his professorship at Florence. In the earlier portion of
      his artistic career, Costa exhibited at Paris (with Corot,
      Troyon, and others); afterwards he found in England his chief
      patrons, and many of his pupils. In 1853, at Rome, he made the
      acquaintance of Leighton, whose intimate friend he remained
      until the President's death. Another celebrated English artist
      with whom Costa was intimate was Mason; there is considerable
      affinity in some respects between the work of the two men.
      The Italian painter has depicted almost every part of his
      beautiful country. He has been called "the Italian Millet,"
      for the feeling of sublimity which he knows so well how to
      impart to the simplicities of peasant life; while in works
      of pure landscape he especially excels in giving to blue
      mountains, reedy banks, and olive-grown shores a poetical
      charm. (See an interesting account of Professor Costa,
      largely autobiographical, in the _Magazine of Art_, vol. vi.
      His personal reminiscences of Mason and Leighton have been
      published in the _Cornhill Magazine_, March 1897.)

The scenery of the Carrara Mountains is a favourite subject of the
painter. In his pictures of these mountains, "seen across a broad
expanse of plain through a misty atmosphere, he invests forms
undeniably grand in themselves with a more solemn splendour and a
deepened poetry."


1495. CHRIST DISPUTING WITH THE DOCTORS.

  _Ludovico Mazzolino_ (Ferrarese: 1480-1528). _See 169._

This brilliant and characteristic little picture, containing
twenty-eight delicately and elaborately finished figures, is enriched
with one of Mazzolino's usual backgrounds of marble bas-reliefs. The
lower of them represents Moses showing the Tables of the Law to the
Israelites. The upper, the battle between the Israelites and the
Philistines, with David beheading Goliath.


1653. PORTRAIT OF HERSELF.

  _Madame Vigée Le Brun_ (French: 1755-1842).

      All visitors to Paris know this charming artist. Her two
      portraits of herself with her little girl in her arms are in
      the Louvre, and engravings or photographs of them are in every
      printseller's window. They are characteristic of her refined
      drawing, her limpid and transparent colour, her graceful
      sentiment. She excelled in rendering the candour of innocence,
      the charm of childhood, and maternal tenderness. She aimed
      rather at a certain ideal of soft and smiling beauty than at
      realism of portraiture. Some of her personages, even those in
      the highest ranks of life, seem, it has been well said, to
      have traversed the sentimental scenes of the tender Greuze,
      and she was fond of enveloping her sitters in semi-allegorical
      surroundings. If she cannot be reckoned among the great
      portrait-painters, she yet shows a power which is rare among
      artists of her sex, and a charming style of her own which will
      always make her works attractive. Madame le Brun was herself
      one of the most beautiful and accomplished women of her time.
      Elizabeth Louise Vigée was born in Paris, and her early years
      were spent in the studio of her father, who was a painter, and
      among other artistic surroundings. Her own talents rapidly
      developed; by the time she was 15 she had many commissions,
      and at 20 she was already celebrated. Her beauty and social
      charm soon gained for her the friendship of the greatest men
      and women of the day, including La Harpe, D'Alembert, and
      Marie Antoinette. With the Queen she was a great favourite.
      She painted her portrait in 1779, and afterwards no less than
      thirty times. She was made a member of the Royal Academy of
      Painting in 1780, but when the Revolution broke out she left
      Paris in haste. She went from capital to capital; in each
      in turn the charm of her person and manner made her many
      friends, and she was always full of commissions. In 1795 she
      settled for some years at St. Petersburg, where she enjoyed
      the favour of the Imperial Court. In 1802 she came for three
      years to England, where she painted portraits of the Prince
      of Wales and Lord Byron, among others. She was a favourite
      wherever she went, but in spite of all the adulation she
      received she remained simple and natural to the end. When she
      returned to Paris, her salon became the rendezvous of the
      most distinguished writers, painters, and politicians of that
      brilliant period, and her _Souvenirs_, published in 1837, are
      crowded with interesting sketches of her friends. In this frank
      and engaging autobiography she gives us particulars of the
      worthless husband--M. Le Brun, a picture-dealer whom she had
      married when she was 20. He squandered her fortune, but she
      found unfailing consolation in the daughter whom she presses
      to her in those portraits in the Louvre. She outlived both her
      daughter and her husband by many years and died at the age of
      87.

This portrait was painted by the artist in her 27th year. Its
acquisition for the National Gallery is specially interesting, for
it was painted in emulation of the celebrated "Chapeau de Paille" of
Rubens (No. 852). She had seen and admired that work at Antwerp in
1782, and determined to represent herself in a similar effect of shadow
and reflected light. The portrait had so great a success that it gained
her admission to the Académie, where she was received in the following
year, 1783.


1660. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.

  _Adrian van der Werff_ (Dutch: 1659-1722).

      "The painter who by his astounding success did most after
      Gerard de Lairesse to lead the art of painting into a
      perverse path was Adrian van der Werff. He was born at
      Kralinger-Ambacht, near Rotterdam, and received lessons in
      drawing from Cornelis Picollet, and then entered the studio
      of Eglon van der Neer, where he made rapid progress. At
      first he seemed inclined to follow the bent of his master,
      but he deserted the study of nature for the pursuit of the
      ideal, and in doing so he fell into cold sentimentality and
      tasteless affectation. His groups became pretentious, his heads
      monotonous, his bodies have no life, and his flesh-colouring
      assumes the polish and the tint of ivory. These defects,
      however, did not prevent his misleading a certain number of
      people who believed themselves to be connoisseurs. The Duke of
      Wolfenbüttel and other high personages of his time contended
      for the possession of his pictures at enormous prices, and
      praised the merits of their favourite artist to the skies.
      No one more assisted him in his career, and in the making of
      his reputation, than the Elector-Palatine John William, who,
      not satisfied with giving him very considerable commissions,
      also conferred upon him the title of Chevalier, and ennobled
      his family. (The artist signs himself on occasion 'Chevalier
      van Werff'). The compositions which he painted for his patron
      are now to be seen at Munich" (Havard: _The Dutch School_, p.
      280). There is in the Dulwich Gallery a "Judgment of Paris" by
      Van der Werff--a celebrated work painted in 1718 for the Duke
      of Orleans and much admired by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The heads
      are wanting in expression and the flesh is bloodless, but the
      painting is of the greatest finish. There are also pictures
      by him in the Wallace Collection. "The cold porcelain-like
      colour," says Mr. Phillips in his catalogue, "and mechanical
      finish of this artist in the treatment of the nude are much
      less appreciated by modern connoisseurs than they were by
      his contemporaries. Still his general accomplishment and
      the certainty of his execution, in a vicious and wholly
      conventional style, are not to be denied."

In our picture "the courtly painter of polished, lascivious nudities
faces the spectator in a wig of the period of Louis Quatorze, looking
as dignified and impersonal as the painters of that particular age
did manage to look in their portraits." The statue of Fame, holding a
wreath, is characteristic. The portrait is signed, and dated 1685.


1661, 1662. WINGS OF THE ALTAR-PIECE, No. 1093.

  _Ambrogio de Predis_ (Milanese: about 1450-1515).

      This long-forgotten painter was rediscovered by Morelli in
      1880, who claimed for him a considerable place in the Milanese
      school. This claim has since been historically confirmed by the
      document, referred to in the notes to No. 1093, showing that
      Ambrogio de Predis was at work in Milan with Leonardo da Vinci,
      employed as his assistant to paint the wings of the altar-piece
      of which the central portion was the "Vierge aux Rochers." By
      a fortunate purchase these wings by Ambrogio now hang in our
      Gallery, on either side of Leonardo's picture. Ambrogio's best
      work was in portraiture, of which an example (one of the two
      signed and dated by the artist) is also in our Gallery (No.
      1665). Ambrogio and his brother Bernardino were sons of a
      certain Lorenzo Preda of Milan. There is also a Cristoforo de
      Predis, a miniaturist, one of whose miniatures (representing
      Galeazzo Maria Sforza) is in the Wallace Collection, and it is
      probable that from him Ambrogio received his first education in
      art. In 1482 he was established as Court Painter to Ludovico
      il Moro. In 1493 he accompanied Bianca Maria Sforza on the
      occasion of her marriage to the Emperor Maximilian, but was
      back again at Milan in 1494. In 1502 we find him at Innsbruck,
      where he seems to have settled. In 1506 he designed some
      tapestries for the Emperor, after which year nothing more is
      known of him. In the Vienna Gallery is a signed portrait by him
      of the Emperor, dated 1502, and to him Morelli ascribes the
      celebrated profile portrait of Bianca Maria in the Ambrosiana
      at Milan (there erroneously called Beatrice Sforza), hitherto
      assigned to Leonardo. Among other portraits now ascribed to
      Ambrogio are the "Page" in the Morelli Collection at Bergamo,
      and "Fr. Brivio" in the Poldi Pezzoli Collection at Milan. De
      Predis is "a conscientious and careful painter, though his
      drawing and modelling are often defective, particularly in the
      representation of the hand." He "seems to have been an artist
      of some individuality, even after coming under Leonardo's
      influence. He was by nature too much of a miniaturist to
      concern himself with the larger problems of painting, and was
      very limited in his range--even his portraits are uniformly
      treated. He seems, judging by his drawings, to have sought
      to improve himself by a careful and conscientious study of
      Leonardo's work, and when he had the advantage of the master's
      guiding hand he could produce works (like these angels) one
      of which, though lacking the qualities of profound art, has
      a certain charm and even dignity of its own" (_Catalogue of
      Milanese Pictures_ at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1898,
      p. li.; Morelli's _German Galleries_, pp. 413-415; _Roman
      Galleries_, pp. 180-189).

The angel in 1661 may, as suggested above, have been designed, or
begun, by Leonardo himself; that in 1662 must be entirely the work of
Ambrogio. These paintings remained in their place, as we have seen
under 1093, up to 1787. They were purchased in 1878 from Duke Jean
Melzi d'Erie at Milan for £2160.


1664. "LA FONTAINE."

  _J. B. S. Chardin_ (French: 1699-1779). _See 1258._

The woman is drawing water from a copper "fontaine" into a black jug.


1665. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.

  _Ambrogio de Predis_ (Milanese: about 1450-1515). _See 1661._

In his right hand he holds a scroll which bears the painter's signature
AM. PR., the date 1494, and the words AN. 20. Formerly in the
possession of the Archinti family, and supposed to represent Francesco
di Bartolommeo Archinto (1474-1551), who was Governor of Chiavenna. A
very refined portrait; but Morelli points out that the hand is "coarse
and wanting in life."


1674. A BURGOMASTER.

  _Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See 45._

"The costume and rapid execution of this magnificent picture point
rather," says Sir Edward Poynter, "to its being a study than a portrait
painted on commission." Probably also the title by which the picture
has long been known is a mistake: a Burgomaster would not be painted
in such dingy and fantastic garb. The old man was no doubt a model
dressed up by Rembrandt in studio "properties." The knotted stick which
he holds in his hands may be recognised in the painter's portrait
of himself in Lord Ilchester's possession (No. 61 in the Academy
Exhibition of 1899). That portrait is dated 1658, and this picture
probably belongs to the same period. The picturesque but nondescript
headgear worn by the "burgomaster" may have belonged to the master
himself in those latter days when all relics of the former splendours
had vanished. Whoever he may have been, the "Burgomaster," as he lives
for ever on Rembrandt's canvas, is a striking personage; the refined,
intellectual face recalls to some spectators one of the late ornaments
of the Episcopal Bench in our own day. The portrait is a masterpiece
alike of character-reading and of modelling.


1675. PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY.

  _Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See 45._

A noble portrait. Rembrandt was a painter who reverenced old age, and
gave its dignity and beauty to faces the least promising. We may notice
especially the pathetic eyes,--with an expression at once so living
and so sorrowful, and the character in the hands which Rembrandt never
failed to give his sitters. The old lady wears a large white ruff,
"evidently clinging to the costume of her earlier years, for ruffs had
long been out of fashion at the time when the picture was painted." The
picture has been known as the Burgomaster's Wife, but this description
is without authority or probability. There is another portrait of
the same old lady in Lord Wantage's possession (No. 15 in the Academy
Exhibition, 1899). Lord Wantage's picture is dated 1661.

The two magnificent pictures just described, which hold their own
triumphantly even on a wall of masterpieces,[251] were formerly in
possession of Sir William Middleton, Bart., great-uncle to Lady de
Saumarez, and were exhibited at the British Institution in 1858. Since
that date they had been lost to sight until they were purchased for
the National Gallery in 1899.[252] They are believed to have been in
possession of the Lee family, Lady de Saumarez's ancestors, from the
time that they were painted, but they may have come into the family
with a certain John van Enkoren, a Dutch gentleman, who married a
second cousin of Sir William Middleton.


1676. CHRIST DISPUTING WITH THE DOCTORS.

  _Francesco de Herrera, the elder_ (Spanish: 1576-1656).

      Francesco de Herrera, the elder--so called to distinguish him
      from a son of the same name who was also a painter--was the
      first to throw off the timid conventional style hitherto in
      vogue, and to adopt the bold and vigorous manner which became
      characteristic of the school of Seville. He drew, we are told,
      with charred reeds, and painted with a housepainter's brush. It
      is said that on occasions he would employ a servant to smear
      the paints on his canvas with a coarse brush, and then himself
      shape the rough masses into figures and draperies. In the
      Louvre there is an important picture by Herrera, "St. Basil
      dictating his Doctrine," of which Théophile Gautier said that
      it was "dashed off with an unimaginable fury of the brush, and
      blazed with the flashing of some auto-da-fè." In the Earl of
      Clarendon's Collection are three powerful pictures (shown at
      the New Gallery, 1895-96) representing scenes in the life of
      St. Bonaventura. But most of Herrera's extant works, in oil and
      fresco, remain at Seville. The vigour of his style was equalled
      by the impetuosity of his temper. Pupils flocked round him,
      but the violence of his outbursts drove them away. Among this
      number was Velazquez. He perverted his talent as an engraver
      of medals to the work of coining, and when suspected of this
      offence fled for sanctuary to the Jesuits' College. There he
      painted a picture which was shown to Philip IV. "What need,"
      said the King, "has a man gifted with abilities like yours of
      silver and gold? Go, you are free; and take care that you do
      not get into this scrape again." He could not, however, change
      his violent habits, and his children, we are told, robbed him
      and fled from his house. In 1650 Herrera removed to Madrid,
      where he had the pleasure, or mortification, of seeing his
      former pupil, Velazquez, at the height of his fame.

A work in the painter's less impetuous style, but marked by the vigour
characteristic of the Spanish and Italian "naturalists."


1680. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.

  _Dutch School_ (17th Century).

An admirable portrait of a young man with long golden hair, looking
out at the spectator. The picture is signed J. Karel du Jardin. It has
sometimes been attributed to the well-known painter of that name (see
826), and been said to be a portrait of the artist by himself. But the
initial J. does not confirm this theory.


1682. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Francesco di Giorgio_ (Sienese: 1439-1502).

      Francesco di Giorgio Martini was one of the most distinguished
      architects and engineers of his time. He wrote a treatise on
      "Civil and Military Architecture," and was a great authority,
      says Vasari, on "all instruments required for the purposes of
      war." There are two altar-pieces by him in the Siena Academy,
      and he also occasionally produced works in sculpture: "this he
      could do very conveniently, being a man of fair possessions as
      well as of remarkable ability, wherefore he did not work for
      the sake of gain, but for his own pleasure, and when he felt
      inclined, to the end that he might leave honourable memorials
      of his existence behind him."

"This quaint little picture represents the Virgin in the attitude of
walking, leading the Infant Saviour by the hand. She wears a white
dress, shaded blue, with a small gold pattern delicately painted upon
it, and a rose-coloured mantle lined with dark green, and holds in her
right hand a branch of roses. The drapery falls with much grace, and
she looks down with a sweet expression to the Child" (_National Gallery
Report_, 1899).


1683. STUDY OF A HORSE.

  _Cuyp_ (Dutch: 1620-1691). _See 53._

The glossy texture of the horse is well rendered.


1686. STUDY OF FLOWERS.

  _Henri Fantin-Latour_ (French: 1836-1904).

      Ignace Henri Jean Théodore Fantin-Latour was born at Grenoble,
      the son of a famous pastellist. He first exhibited at the Salon
      in 1861. In 1864 his "Hommage à Delacroix" created a sensation.
      In this country, where he was a constant exhibitor at the Royal
      Academy, he is best known for his exquisite studies of roses
      and other flowers. But he was also a painter of portraits (see
      No. 1952) and of romantic subjects inspired by his musical
      tastes. In portraiture, a thorough, though a sympathetic,
      realist (witness his "Monet's studio at the Batignolles" in the
      Luxembourg),--he becomes fanciful when he enters the domain
      of romance. A favourite medium was lithography, in which he
      excelled; the British Museum has a fine set of proofs. His
      subjects are taken from the motives used in the musical dramas
      of Wagner and Berlioz.

Late summer flowers, chiefly roses, in a vase on a wooden table. The
background, as usual with this painter, is of a flat tone of warm gray.


1689. A MAN AND WIFE.

  _Mabuse_ (Flemish: about 1470-1541). _See 656._

Portraits, uncompromising in thoroughness, of a severe and
uncompromising couple. "This masterpiece," says Sir Edward Poynter,
"combines with a high perfection of finish and modelling, every detail
being finished with the utmost care, even to the stubble of the man's
beard, great breadth of effect and a beautiful quality of light and
shade" (_National Gallery Report_, 1900). The portraits, formerly
in the collection of Captain A. F. Dawson, used to be attributed
to Quentin Matsys. Some authorities ascribe them to his brother,
Jan. Others believe that the work belongs to the German school. The
attribution to Mabuse is made in the Director's Report for 1900.


1694. VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. JOHN.

  _Fra Bartolommeo_ (Florentine: 1475-1517).

      Bartolommeo di Pagholo del Fattorino, one of the greatest of
      the Florentine masters, is commonly known as Baccio della
      Porta, or Fra Bartolommeo. He was born at the village of
      Savignano, near Prato, and was sent while still a lad to the
      studio of Cosimo Rosselli at Florence, where he lived with
      some kinsfolk in a house near the gate of San Piero Gattolini
      (now the Porta Romana). The neighbours, seeing him come and
      go to his work, and ignoring surnames with the custom of the
      time, distinguished him from all the other Bartholemews as
      Baccio della Porta. "He was loved in Florence," says Vasari,
      "for his virtue, for he was very diligent at his work, quiet
      and good-natured, fearing God, living a tranquil life, flying
      all vicious practices, and taking great pleasure in preaching,
      and the society of worthy and sober persons." In the studio of
      Rosselli he made the acquaintance of Mariotto Albertinelli, as
      erratic, gay, and idle as his companion was pure, gentle, and
      austere. Between the two young men a warm friendship sprang
      up, which continued unbroken till the death of Albertinelli
      in 1515. When Fra Bartolommeo temporarily relinquished the
      practice of art in 1500, Albertinelli took up his abandoned
      canvases, and from 1509 onwards the two men worked in formal
      partnership. The religious spirit of Bartolommeo had been
      profoundly impressed by Savonarola's preaching. To the famous
      bonfire, into which the people cast their pomps and vanities,
      our painter brought all the studies and drawings which he had
      made from the nude. He was among the band of faithful followers
      who shut themselves up with Savonarola in San Marco. "Having
      very little courage," says Vasari, "being indeed of a timid
      and even cowardly disposition, he lost heart on hearing the
      clamours of an attack, which was made upon the convent shortly
      after, and seeing some wounded and others killed, he began to
      have grievous doubts respecting his position. Thereupon he
      made a vow, that if he might be permitted to escape from the
      rage of that strife, he would instantly assume the religious
      habit of the Dominicans." This he did in the year 1500, and
      for some time afterwards his brush was idle. When he resumed
      work, it was on condition that the convent received all the
      produce of his labours. In 1506, when Raphael visited Florence,
      he formed a friendship with Fra Bartolommeo, in whose work he
      doubtless found something to assimilate. Some years afterwards,
      Fra Bartolommeo went to Rome, where he painted a figure of
      St. Paul, and part of one of St. Peter (now in the Quirinal),
      leaving Raphael to finish the work. Fra Bartolommeo suffered
      from ill-health, and died at the early age of 42.

      The contributions made by Fra Bartolommeo to Italian art were
      fourfold. He exhibited a scientific scheme of composition
      based on principles of strict symmetry, and in this respect
      he was the precursor of Raphael. In colouring he was equal
      to the best of his contemporaries; in his better works
      brilliance is combined with harmony of tone in a very charming
      manner. In some of his works, however, the attempt to adopt
      the chiaroscuro of Leonardo led to an over-darkening of
      the shadows. Vasari noticed even in his day that the use
      of printer's-black and ivory-black had caused some of Fra
      Bartolommeo's shadows to become unduly heavy. In his landscape
      backgrounds, Fra Bartolommeo showed a considerable advance on
      his predecessors. "Everything is true and harmonious, up to
      its intention, which is to be simple, calm, consistent, and
      real,--real, and yet breathing an idyllic beauty." Lastly, he
      was the inventor of the "lay figure." "He always considered
      it advisable," says Vasari, "to have the living object before
      him when he worked; and the better to execute his draperies,
      arms, and things of similar kind, he caused a figure, the site
      of life, to be made in wood, with the limbs moveable at the
      joints, and on this he then arranged the real draperies."

      Fra Bartolommeo's range was limited. He is seen at his best
      not in works (such as the fresco of the "Last Judgment," now
      in the picture gallery of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova)
      which call for the exercise of powerful imagination, but in
      Madonna pieces. "Nature made Fra Bartolommeo," says Symonds,
      "the painter of adoration." He excels in the poetry of simple
      religious feeling. His works are rare outside Italy. Copies
      from some of his frescoes at Florence are in the Arundel
      Society's Collection; but the treasure city of Fra Bartolommeo
      at his best is Lucca. Few figures in Italian art have been more
      often copied and photographed than his charming little angel
      who sings at the foot of the Madonna's throne in the Cathedral
      of Lucca.

Fra Bartolommeo's pictures "sum up," says Ruskin, "the principles of
great Italian religious art in its finest period,--serenely luminous
sky,--full light on the faces; local colour the dominant power over
a chiaroscuro more perfect because subordinate; absolute serenity of
emotion and gesture; and rigid symmetry in composition." And elsewhere
he speaks of "the precious and pure passages of intense feeling and
heavenly light, holy and undefined, and glorious with the changeless
passion of eternity, which sanctify with their shadeless peace the deep
and noble conceptions of the early school of Italy--of Fra Bartolommeo,
Perugino, and the early mind of Raffaelle" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i.
pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. i. § 22, and epilogue of 1883 to vol. ii.). Some
trace of these characteristics may be found in the present picture. It
is bright in colour, balanced in composition, simple in feeling, and
shows a charming Tuscan landscape. Thoroughly Tuscan also is the type
of peasant Madonna, with her brown hair tied up in a blue handkerchief.
The infant Christ is almost grotesque, but the little St. John may
take his place among Fra Bartolommeo's collection of sweet child-faces.
Our picture[253] is ascribed to the years 1507-9. In the Corsini
Gallery at Rome is a repetition of it done at a later period, with the
figures, life-sized, reversed, and with St. Joseph added to complete
the pyramidal composition.


1695. LANDSCAPE WITH NYMPHS.

  _Venetian School_ (early 16th Century).

From the South Kensington Museum: very characteristic of the Venetian
school is the beautiful blue distance.


1696. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Giovanni Bellini_ (Venetian: 1426-1516). _See 189._

A fragment of a fresco, painted in 1481 and originally brought from the
church of Magre, near Schio, in the neighbourhood of Vicenza. The work,
if by Bellini, is somewhat earlier than the "Madonna and Child" (280)
of our Gallery.[254] "We have," says Mr. Roger Fry, "no example of
Bellini's fresco work by which to judge it. It may therefore be argued
that the weak construction of the Virgin's figure and the poor drawing
of the child are the result of Bellini's want of familiarity with the
medium, nor can it be denied that the weaknesses are exaggerations of
certain peculiarities of Bellini's own design. This is particularly
noticeable in the drawing of the child, which approaches very nearly
in type and expression the child of the 'Madonna between the Magdalen
and St. Catherine' of the Academy at Venice. But in no undoubted work
by Bellini is the drawing so clumsy as this. Much, however, may be
attributed to restoration, particularly in the Infant Christ, and it is
impossible to deny the great beauty of the colour--a peculiar golden
glow which is very unusual in fresco, and is indeed a translation
into that medium of the golden richness of Bellini's _tempera_ and
oil pieces. The Madonna's expression has a certain tenderness and
charm which is characteristic of Bellini, but it lacks the definite
realisation of a mood which he almost invariably compassed" (_The
Pilot_, Jan. 5, 1901). On the other hand, according to a well-known
critic, writing in the _Daily Telegraph_, "the wistfulness of the
Virgin is not the wistfulness of Giambellino, but rather that of
Bartolommeo Montagna or some kindred painter of the school of Vicenza.
Again, the type of the Virgin and the adjustment of her headgear recall
the severe yet passionate master of Vicenza just named, under the
influence, not so much of Giovanni Bellini as of the elder school of
Venice--that of the Vivarini."


1699. THE LESSON.

  _Jan Vermeer of Delft_ (Dutch: 1632-1675). _See 1383._
  _See also_ (p. xxi)

A "symphony in black and white"; cool in effect, almost to the point
of austerity and chilliness. The faces are full of expression. The
master turns in expectation to the pupil, as much as to say "Come,
don't you know?" The pupil is ready with his answer, and seems to
appeal for encouragement: "That is right, is it not?" There is a
severe absence of details; everything in the picture is made to
contribute to the colour scheme. "The play of cool light on the faces
and hands, on the man's black dress, and the gray tablecloth with its
patches of blue shadow; the design of the man's large hat against the
dark background, the almost pathetic charm of the fair-haired boy's
expression, the regular black and white of the tiled floor,--all seem
chosen for their pictorial value alone and skilfully composed into this
grave, almost austere harmony. The largeness of design and rejection
of all superfluous detail in this picture connect it with Vermeer's
more daring compositions" (M. H. Witt, in the _Nineteenth Century_,
October 1900). Only one life-size group by the master is certainly
authenticated--the signed "Courtesans" at Dresden. The attribution of
our picture to the master is uncertain.


1700. PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN.

  _Unknown_ (Dutch School: 17th Century).

A strong face, finely painted. The iron-gray of the man's hair combines
harmoniously with the lawn collar and cuffs; a harmony in black and
gray.


1701. LANDSCAPE WITH WATERMILL.

  _Allart van Everdingen_ (Dutch: 1612-1675).

      This painter, an elder contemporary and precursor of Ruysdael,
      was born at Alkmaar. He studied successively under Roelandt
      Savery at Utrecht and Pieter Molyn at Haarlem. In a voyage
      which he made to the Baltic he was shipwrecked on the coast
      of Norway, and he remained for some time in that country.
      On returning to his native land he reproduced the scenes
      among which he had dwelt--torrents edged around by huge firs
      springing out from sombre masses of rock, and throwing their
      spray into large stretches of transparent water. A large number
      of studies from nature remain from his hand, and these he
      composed into pictures. His works had some vogue in Holland,
      where they provided a counter-attraction to the views of the
      softer and more smiling country which the "Italianisers" were
      offering to the public. If Ruysdael did not himself go to
      Norway, it must have been Everdingen's Norwegian scenes that
      inspired him. Everdingen's "colouring is simple and pure, his
      touch broad and facile, and it is evident that every object
      in his pictures was studied from nature." He was also an
      accomplished etcher. He died at Amsterdam.


1776. THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.

  _Signorelli_ (Cortona: 1441-1523). _See 1128._

A _predella_ picture; characteristic of the master, and in good
preservation. Formerly in the possession of Count Colonna Ferretti (a
nephew of Pius IX.) at Cortona.


1786. THE LAKE OF THUN.

  _Alexandre Calame_ (Swiss: 1810-1864).

      This painter is of some interest in the history of painting as
      one of the pioneers who discovered for artistic purposes the
      picturesqueness of Switzerland. He was born at Vevay, and was
      the son--not (as sometimes stated) of a simple mason, but--of
      a clever stone-cutter. He was very delicate as a child, and
      an accident at school deprived him of the sight of his right
      eye. As a youth, Calame obtained employment in a bank at
      Geneva. He further aided the narrow resources of his home by
      making little Swiss views in colour, which the shopkeepers
      took up. Foreigners were glad to bring them away as travelling
      memorials, in place of photographs, which did not then exist.
      His employer, M. Diodati, noticing young Calame's talent for
      art, generously enabled him to obtain instruction. He made
      rapid progress, and became headmaster of a drawing-school in
      Geneva. In 1837 he began contributing to foreign exhibitions
      views of Switzerland, and these won for him a considerable
      reputation. He visited England in 1850, and here, as in other
      countries, his works found many purchasers. In the South
      Kensington Museum there is a large collection of his Swiss
      views in water-colour. He was a lithographer and engraver, as
      well as a painter, and his plates of Swiss landscapes were at
      one time well known. He received commissions from many European
      sovereigns, and was visited by all the great personages who
      passed through Geneva.

      In France, indeed, art-circles were cool towards him. "_Un
      Calame, deux Calames, trois Calames--que de calamités_" ran the
      phrase every year in the Paris Salon. But in Germany he found
      warm admirers and formed several imitators. His lithographed
      studies of trees, and his landscapes for copying remained in
      use for some decades as a medium of instruction in drawing.
      He was a conscientious workman, who finished the whole of
      his canvas or paper with equal industry, and his drawing was
      correct. But his colouring is insipid, and his atmosphere
      somewhat heavy. "By painting he understood the illumination of
      drawings, and his drawing was that of an engraver. Sentiment
      is replaced by correct manipulation, and in the deep blue
      mirror of his Alpine lakes, as in the luminous red of his
      Alpine summits, there is always to be seen the illuminator who
      has first drawn the contours with a neat pencil and pedantic
      correctness" (Muther's _History of Modern Painting_, ii. 322).
      Calame's fertility was very great. His note-books contain the
      record of 450 finished pictures in oil, 500 studies, and 1200
      water-colours (E. Rambert: _Alexandre Calame. Sa vie et son
      oeuvre_, Paris, 1884).

The mountain in our picture is the Blumlis Alp: an afternoon effect.


1810. PORTRAIT OF A BOY.

  _François Duchatel_ (Flemish: 1616-1694).

      This painter, whose works are very rare, is said to have
      been a pupil of David Teniers, the younger. In some of his
      pictures representing village festivals he followed the style
      of that master; in others, of family groups, his work rather
      resembles that of Gonzales Coques. His most important picture
      is in the Museum at Ghent. It represents the "Inauguration
      of Charles II., King of Spain, as Count of Flanders," and
      comprises about a thousand small figures. Duchatel was born at
      Brussels. He worked for some time in Paris in conjunction with
      his fellow-countryman Van der Meulen (see 1447). The picture
      before us, with its vigorous touch and warm colour, shows that
      Duchatel was an accomplished portrait-painter.


1812. THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN.

  Ascribed to _Lo Spagna_. (_See 1032_).

"The figure of the Saviour and the angel are identical with those in
the picture by Lo Spagna in the National Gallery numbered 1032, but
the execution of the work points to possibly a different hand. It was
ascribed by Passavant to Raphael. On the back of the panel are incised
the initials G. D. H. in a monogram surmounted by a crown, and an
inscription on paper of probably the 18th century; 'All' Illmo et
Eccmo Giovanni Hiccolini (_sic_) Imbascatore (_sic_) di Toscana in
Roma.' It was exhibited in the Art Treasures Exhibition at Manchester
in 1857 (No. 146) under the name of Raphael, when it belonged to Mr.
Henry Farrer, who had it from Russia" (_National Gallery Report_, 1900).


1842. HEADS OF ANGELS.

  _Tuscan School_ (15th century).
  _See also_ (p. xxi)

A characteristic fragment of fresco.


1843. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

  _Benedetto Bonfigli_ (Umbrian: 1420-1496).

      A characteristic, if unimportant, example of one of the early
      masters of the Umbrian School. Bonfigli (or Buonfiglio)
      was a native of Perugia, and his principal work, a series
      of frescoes, full of quaint costume and fantastic detail,
      representing the lives of St. Louis of Toulouse and St.
      Herculanus, is in the Palazzo del Consiglio there.

There is much naïvete in the surprised expression of the seated Sir
Joseph, and much dainty charm in the youths with their vessels of gold.


1845. THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD.

  _Paris Bordone_ (Venetian: 1503-1570). _See 637._

The Saviour holds in his hand a scroll inscribed "Ecce sum lux mundi,"
but the expression is vapid.


1847. THE VIRGIN CROWNED BY ANGELS.

  _Luca Signorelli_ (Umbrian: 1441-1523). _See 1128._

This important picture, in a splendid frame of the period, is of
special interest from the record of authenticity which it bears.
On the cartellino at the foot, is an inscription informing us that
"the noble picture before us was an offering of devotion by Master
Aloiusius, a French physician, and Thomasina his wife," that "Luca
Signorelli, the illustrious painter of Cortona" was the artist, and
that the date was 1515. In the archives of the little town of Montone,
near Umbertide, a deed, dated September 10, 1515, has been discovered,
which informs us further that the picture was painted for Master
Aloiusius, living at Montone, for the chapel of St. Christina at that
place, by Luca Signorelli "on account of their mutual and cordial
friendship, and in consideration of the free services which he had
received, and in future hopes to receive, from the said Aloiusius."
The physician on his part undertakes in the same deed to give free
medical attendance henceforth to the said Luca, and to any member of
his household. The place for which the picture was painted accounts
for the figure of St. Christina, on the right of the Virgin. Among her
adventures was being tied to a millstone and cast into the Lake of
Bolsena, but angels upheld the millstone, and she floated back to land.
The legend explains also the charming view of a lake seen beneath the
feet of the Virgin. The altar-piece was discovered by Signor Mancini in
a cellar at Montone, much obscured by neglect, and was for some time in
his collection at Città di Castello. It has now been cleaned, and is
apparently in fine condition.

The date of the picture shows that it was painted towards the end of
the artist's life, when he was 74 years of age, and some critics have
found in the work signs that the master's hand was losing its cunning.
Certainly the composition of the principal lines--with the upper figure
at each side in line with the lower--is somewhat awkward, and the St.
Christina is a heavy figure with a meaningless expression. That of St.
Sebastian, however, is vigorous; the central group of the Madonna and
Child borne by cherubims is impressive; the angels above are very fine,
and St. Jerome and St. Nicholas of Bari are good. The details of St.
Nicholas's robe and mitre deserve study. It is amusing to note that two
of the critics who scarify the picture single out the landscape--the
one, as the worst part of it, the other, as its redeeming feature.


1848. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.

  _Abraham Raguineau_ (Dutch: 1623-1681).

      This painter, born in London, settled at the Hague, where he
      seems to have met with little prosperity. At a later time, he
      was living at Leyden, and was writing-master to the Prince of
      Orange.

The picture is signed, and dated (1657), at the top of the oval on the
left, and is the only known signed work of the painter in existence.
It shows us a pleasant-looking, if somewhat characterless youth, aged
18 (as the description states), whose coat, shirt, and collar make a
delicate study in cool grey tones.


1849. THE NATIVITY.

  _Jacopo Pacchiarotto_ (Sienese: 1474-1540).

      The story of this painter and revolutionist--who, joining
      the Bardotti and taking part in popular risings in Siena,
      was concealed by the monks in a tomb, beside a newly-buried
      corpse--is familiar from Browning's humorous telling of it
      in his _Pacchiarotto and how he worked in Distemper_. He was
      originally a pupil of Bernardino Fungai (see 1331); but his
      later work shows the influence of Fra Bartolommeo and Raphael.

"He appears to have studied Raphael," says Lanzi, "with the greatest
care; and there are heads and whole figures so lively, and with such
grace in the features, that to some connoisseurs they seem to possess
the ideal." Certainly there is a liveliness and an appropriateness
of expression about the figures in this picture which distinguish it
from the stiff mannerism of earlier Sienese pictures. Kneeling in
adoration are St. John the Baptist and St. Jerome (with the stone, in
his character as penitent). St. Stephen, behind St. John, carries on
his head the stone, as symbol of his martyrdom. Behind St. Jerome is
St. Nicholas of Bari, a finely rendered portrait of venerable age. Of
the figures in the niche-shaped panels in the frame, that, at the top
on the left, of the Angel of the Annunciation is particularly graceful.
The panels of the predella show the Agony in the Garden, the Betrayal,
the Crucifixion, the Deposition, and the Resurrection.


1850. A SCENE ON THE ICE.

  _Andries Vermeulen_ (Dutch: 1763-1814). _See 1447._


1851. THE INTERIOR OF A STABLE.

  _Dutch School_ (17th century).


1860. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Ascribed to Sir Antonio More_ (Flemish: 1572-1578).


1872. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Alvise Vivarini_ (Venetian, painted 1461-1503).

      All visitors to Venice are familiar with a picture, in the
      church of the Redentore, of the Madonna and Sleeping Child,
      with two playing angels; there is a bird on the curtain above,
      and some fruit on the parapet below. It is one of the most
      charming little pictures in Venice, and is usually shown as a
      work of Giovanni Bellini. Modern criticism assigns it, however,
      to Alvise Vivarini, to whom an important place in the history
      of Venetian painting is now accorded as an artist developing on
      lines independent of the Bellinis, and as the Master of Lorenzo
      Lotto.[255] That he was largely employed in the Ducal Palace
      we know from Vasari, who describes his works there, commending
      more particularly their fine perspective and "portraits from
      the life so well depicted as to prove that this master copied
      nature very faithfully." These works, begun in 1489 and stopped
      by the artist's death in 1503, were destroyed in the fire of
      1577. Of his extant works, the earliest one, which is dated
      (1475), is at Montefiorentino. The altar-piece in the Venice
      Academy is dated 1480, and that in the Berlin Gallery is
      probably of the same period. To a later date are assigned the
      Madonnas of the Redentore and S. Giovanni in Bragora at Venice,
      and the present picture. His latest work, finished after his
      death by Marco Basaiti, is the large altar-piece of St. Ambrose
      in the Frari.

This picture (which is signed on a cartellino on the parapet) is, says
Mr. Berenson, "delightful as a composition. The Madonna is seen down
to the waist, holding the Child on a parapet, while behind her, to
the left, a window opens out on a charming landscape. The Madonna's
face has a tinge of almost Botticellian melancholy, as in Lotto's
Recanati altarpiece. The Child is almost the _putto_ on the right in
the Redentore picture, but somewhat more bony. The draperies already
have the freedom of Alvise's latest works." The picture, formerly in
the Manfrini Gallery, was presented by Mr. Charles Loeser in 1898.


1895. BARON WAHA DE LINTER OF NAMUR.

  _Jacob Jordaens_ (Flemish: 1593-1678).

      Jordaens, who stands next to Rubens and Van Dyck among the
      great Flemish painters, was a fellow-pupil with the former
      under Adam Van Noort, whose daughter he married in 1616. In
      the same year he became a member of the Painter's Guild of
      St. Luke, being described as a "water-colourist"; his first
      works were in fact paintings in distemper and cartoons for the
      tapestry workers. By 1620 his fame as a painter of pictures
      was established. His works, which are very numerous, are of
      all kinds of subjects, but he is little represented in British
      Galleries. Examples may be seen, however, in the Wallace
      Collection and the Dulwich Gallery.

The name of the sitter is on the frame; his coat of arms and crest,
with the inscription "Aetatis suae 63, 1626," are on the upper corner
of the picture. It is a fine portrait, characteristic of the exuberance
and vigour which mark the work of Jordaens.


1896. INTERIOR OF A CHURCH.

  _Pieter Saenredam_ (Dutch: 1597-1665).

      Saenredam, who lived at Haarlem, is one of the leading Dutch
      painters of architecture. His interiors in particular are
      remarkable for their luminous effect. Another example of them
      may be seen at Dulwich.

The church is the Domkerk at Utrecht. Notice the boy making a
caricature on the wall; underneath this is the artist's signature.


1897. THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.

  _Lorenzo Monaco_ (Florentine: 1370-1425).

      Don Lorenzo was born at Siena, but became a Camaldose monk of
      the Convent of the Angeli at Florence, his early practice being
      that of a miniaturist. In the principal of his known works--an
      altar-piece of 1413 now in the Uffizi at Florence, Mr. Roger
      Fry bids us note the cunning with which the painter "weaves
      together his flowing curves," the "rare charm in his ætherial,
      unstructural draperies," and "a kind of visible music" in his
      design (_Monthly Review_, June 1901).

Something of these qualities may be seen in the long and slender
figures of our picture. The decorativeness of its patterns, and the
architectural details, should also be noticed. The picture, formerly
in a church at Certaldo, is in its original Gothic frame. Crowe and
Cavalcaselle (vol. i. p. 554) suppose the picture to have formed part
of a larger altar-piece of which the two wings are in our gallery,
ascribed to the school of Taddeo Gaddi (Nos. 215, 216). But the
different scale of the figures in them negatives this supposition.


1903. LANDSCAPE, WITH DOGS AND GAME.

  _Jan Fyt_ (Dutch: 1609-1661). _See 1003._
  _See also_ (p. xxi)


1909. THE EXECUTION OF LADY JANE GREY.

  _Paul Delaroche_ (French: 1797-1856).

      Hippolyte, or (as he called himself) Paul, Delaroche, was the
      popular French painter of his time, and this is one of his
      best known pictures. He turned to historical illustration
      as affording scope for an art which should reconcile the
      "classical" with the "romantic." He was the embodiment in the
      art of painting, as someone has put it, of Louis Philippe's
      maxim of the _juste-milieu_. To the same class with the present
      picture belong his "Death of Queen Elizabeth" (_Louvre_), "The
      Princes in the Tower" (familiar from engravings), and several
      works in the Wallace Collection. Ruskin, while not enamoured
      of his pictures (see _Fors Clavigera_, Letter 35), allows
      that his "honest effort to grasp the reality of conceived
      scenes" compares favourably with "the deathful formalism and
      fallacy of what was once called 'Historical Art,'" and that his
      kindly-meant talent has "contributed greatly to the instruction
      of innumerable households" (_Works_, vol. xix. pp. 50, 205).
      Théophile Gautier, more contemptuously, described Delaroche's
      art as that of "historical illustration for the family use of
      the _bourgeoisie_," and the vogue which it enjoyed all over
      Europe set the fashion for what became a prevailing style of
      "stage-dramatic representation" in painting. In 1833 (the
      date on our picture) Delaroche was appointed a professor at
      the École des Beaux-Arts, and from 1837-1841 he was engaged
      upon the principal work of his life, the decoration of the
      amphitheatre of that school--the idea of his design being an
      assemblage of the chiefs of the arts in past ages to witness
      the triumphs of the labourers in his own age. He was assisted
      in this colossal work by many pupils; among them was Edward
      Armitage, R. A. (see vol. ii. No. 759), who has given an
      interesting account of the manner of their co-operation (see
      _Report of the Commissioners on the Royal Academy_, 1863, p.
      64). The "Hemicycle" was much damaged by fire in 1853, and was
      restored after the death of Delaroche by Robert Henry.

The scene is in the Tower, February 12, 1554. Lady Jane Grey, condemned
for treason, has been blindfolded, and is being led to the block by the
Lieutenant of the Tower.


1914. A ROYAL CHÂTEAU IN HOLLAND.


1915. A DUTCH CHURCH AND MARKET PLACE.

  _Jan van der Heyden_ (Dutch: 1637-1712). _See 866._

The château in the former picture is "The House in the Wood" (Huis ten
Bosch), built in 1647, in which the first Peace Conference was held at
The Hague.


1917. AN ITALIAN LANDSCAPE.

  _Jan Both_ (Dutch: 1610-1662). _See 71._

A fine example of the "soft golden tones" noted in our account of Both
as characteristic of his best works.


1918. MARKET PLACE AT THE HAGUE.

  _Paul Constantin La Fargue_ (Dutch: died 1782).

      The work of an artist (best known by his drawings and etchings)
      who painted many small pictures of his native city, The Hague.

A scene in the Groén Market; the tower of the Groote Kerk in the
background.


1925. PORTRAIT OF A MAN.

  _Lucas Cranach_ (German: 1472-1553). _See 291._

Upon the shield to the left is the painter's crest, as in No. 291; with
the date 1524. The head is fine and full of character; the hands are
less successful.


1930. PORTRAIT OF A LADY AS ST. MARGARET.

  _Francisco Zurbaran_ (Spanish: 1598-1662). _See 230._

Zurbaran, it has been said, was "a great though not a professed,
portrait painter." The lady is St. Margaret only in virtue of the
dragon, the emblem of the saint; otherwise this is a portrait of a
young lady in a fanciful country costume.


1937. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Bartholomeus van der Helst_ (Dutch: 1611-1670). _See 140._

This picture, said to be a portrait of a lady of the house of Braganza,
was formerly in the collection of Mr. Beckford at Fonthill. It is
signed, and dated 1645. The "careful finish," which Sir Joshua Reynolds
commended in the work of Van der Helst, may be well studied here in the
rich and beautiful costume and jewellery.


1938. PORTRAIT OF HIS FATHER.

  _Albrecht Dürer_ (German: 1471-1528).

      The acquisition of this picture adds to the Gallery a fine
      example of the great artist, who in all the characteristics
      of his art is the central representative of the German
      spirit,--"its combination of the wild and rugged with the
      homely and the tender, its meditative depth, its enigmatic
      gloom, its sincerity and energy, its iron diligence and
      discipline." The range of his powers is shown not only in
      his works that survive, but in the estimation in which he
      was held by his contemporaries. When he went to Venice they
      "praised his beautiful colouring," Bellini honoured him with
      his friendship, "and he was everywhere treated," so he wrote,
      "as a gentleman." Raphael sent him some drawings, on one of
      which this note in Dürer's handwriting may still be seen:
      "Raphael of Urbino, who has been so highly esteemed by the
      Pope, drew these naked figures, and sent them to Albrecht Dürer
      in Nuremberg to show him his hand." He was a writer as well as
      an artist. "Painting," said Melanchthon, "was the least of his
      accomplishments"; whilst of his personal qualities Luther bore
      testimony when he wrote: "As for Dürer, assuredly affection
      bids us mourn for one who was the best of men.... May he rest
      in peace with his fathers: Amen!"

      He was born at Nuremberg--the son of a goldsmith and the third
      of eighteen children--and Albert of Nuremberg he remained
      to the end--the painter of a city distinguished for its
      "self-restrained, contented, quaint domesticity." His first
      training was from his father in the goldsmith's trade; next,
      when fifteen, he was apprenticed for three and a half years
      to Wohlgemuth, the chief painter of the town; and lastly
      came his _Wanderjahre_, a long course of travel and study
      in foreign lands. In 1494 he settled down at Nuremberg, and
      there, with the exception of a visit to Venice in 1505-1506
      (see p. 190 _n._), and to the Netherlands in 1520-1521, he
      passed the remainder of his life in the busy and honoured
      exercise of the various branches of his art. He had married,
      at the age of twenty-three, a well-to-do merchant's daughter.
      The stories which have long passed current with regard to her
      being imperious, avaricious, and fretful, have been entirely
      discredited on closer knowledge of the facts. The marriage was
      childless, but husband and wife lived throughout on terms both
      of affection and companionship. As for examples of Dürer's
      work, the widely-spread prints of the "Knight and Death"
      and the "Melancholia" give the best idea of his powers of
      imagination; while in actual specimens of his handiwork in
      drawing, the British Museum is the second richest collection in
      the world.

The best commentary on this picture is the description of his father
which Dürer wrote in a history of his family:--

      "My dear father became a goldsmith, a pure and skilful man. He
      passed his life in great toil and stern, hard labour, having
      nothing for his support save what he earned with his hand for
      himself, his wife, and his children; so that he had little
      enough. He underwent, moreover, manifold afflictions, trials,
      and adversities. But he won just praise from all who knew him,
      for he lived an honourable, Christian life; was a man patient
      of spirit, mild and peaceable to all, and very thankful towards
      God. For himself he had little need of company and worldly
      pleasures: he was also of few words, and was a God-fearing man.
      This my dear father was very careful with his children to bring
      them up in the fear of God; for it was his highest wish to
      train them well that they might be pleasing in the sight both
      of God and man. Wherefore his daily speech to us was that we
      should love God and deal truly with our neighbours."

It is just such a man that the painter here sets before us. "The face
is pathetic with the deep furrows ploughed in by seventy years of
labour and sorrow. Yet as he stands there, so quietly, for his son
to paint him, there is just a trace of pleasure and pride lurking in
the kind old face" (Conway's _Literary Remains of Dürer_, p. 35). An
inscription on the top of the panel records that it was painted in
1497, when the father was seventy and the son twenty-six. There are
three other versions of the picture--at Munich, Frankfort, and Syon
House respectively, and the question which is the original has been
much disputed. The present picture (exhibited at the Old Masters, 1903)
was bought, with No. 1937, for £10,000 from the Marquis of Northampton.


1939. VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH SAINTS.

  _French School_ (15th century).

A little picture almost as delicately wrought as an illuminated page in
a missal. The donor is kneeling in the door of the Gothic chapel. The
Virgin and Child are in "a garden enclosed," where columbines spring
up at her feet; at the top of the picture are two small figures of St
Michael driving out Satan.


1944. "PORTRAIT OF ARIOSTO."

  _Titian_ (Venetian: 1477-1576). _See 4._

This superb portrait, though traditionally called "Ariosto," bears no
resemblance to the poet. It is the picture of an Italian aristocrat of
the Renaissance that the painter sets before us; of a man refined and
luxurious, unimpassioned, and somewhat cynical. Immortalised by art,
he looks out upon us with a somewhat scornful glance; the handsome
head is one of those thoroughly individualised representations which,
once studied, fix themselves indelibly in the memory. Sober and yet
sumptuous in colour, the picture is enveloped in a luminous haze; and
the costume, with the quilted sleeve of steely grey, is a masterpiece
of technique.

The picture, which is signed on the parapet Titianus V. (with another
V. at the further end of the parapet), belongs to Titian's earlier
period, when he was under the influence of Giorgione, to which master
indeed it is sometimes attributed.[256] There are several versions
of the picture, including one in Lord Rosebery's collection at
Mentmore.[257] The present picture (Old Masters, 1895) was bought by
Sir George Donaldson from Cobham Hall (Lord Darnley) for £30,000, and
sold by him for the same price to the nation; a portion of the sum
(£9000) being contributed by Mr. W. W. Astor, Mr. Alfred Beit, Lord
Burton, Lord Iveagh, Mr. Pierpont Morgan, and Lady Wantage.


1951. PORTRAIT OF DR. PERAL.

  _Francisco Goya_ (Spanish: 1746-1828). _See 1471._

"Perhaps as good an example as could be found of the brilliancy and
execution and vivid portrayal of character which characterise this
artist at his best" (Official Catalogue).


1952. MR. AND MRS. EDWIN EDWARDS.

  _Henri Fantin-Latour_ (French: 1836-1904). _See 1686._

A fine example of this artist's portraiture, representing old friends
of the French painter, with whom he stayed when in this country. Mr.
Edwards, landscape painter in water-colours and etcher (1823-1879), is
examining a print with an expert's eye. His wife, perhaps less happily
posed (because seemingly disconnected with the other figure), looks
out at the spectator with her arms folded. Mrs. Edwards who presented
this picture to the nation in 1904 died in 1907. "Nearly every one of
Fantin-Latour's pictures in this country passed through her hands, and
have her private marks, by which she was able to identify them after a
lapse of many years."


1953. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Lazzaro Bastiani_ (Venetian: about 1425-1512). _See 750._

In the background is the festoon of fruit, familiar to us in Crivelli's
pictures.


1969. A GREEK CAPTIVE.

  _Henriette Browne_ (French: 1829-1901).


2057. VENUS WITH THE MIRROR.

  _Velazquez_ (Spanish: 1599-1660). _See 197._

This celebrated picture--commonly called "Venus and Cupid," but known
in Spain as the "Venus del Espejo"--is one of the master's rare studies
of the nude, and it is characteristic of his genius. The subject is
professedly mythological, but Velazquez seeks no adventitious interest
from legendary association or idealistic grace. Here, as everywhere,
his standpoint is frankly realistic, whilst the work is saved from
commonness by purity of colour and sincerity of artistic purpose. It
has been truly said that the flesh-painting here makes many another
picture in the Gallery look lifeless and unreal. The face of "Venus" in
the mirror--with broad features enframed in plainly dressed hair--does
not realise the promise of the pretty outline of the head with the
brown hair tied in a knot; and it has been suggested (by Dr. Justi)
that "perhaps the damsel did not wish to be recognised." However
this may be, the very plainness of the face emphasises the artist's
intention. The picturesqueness of the outline and modulations of the
back in a youthful female figure was the artistic effect which he set
himself to render.

The history of the picture is well authenticated.[258] It was painted
about 1650, and passed into the possession of the Duke of Alba on his
marriage in 1688 with Doña Catalina de Haro of Guzmom, Condessa-Duquesa
de Olivares, the picture forming part of her dowry. It is mentioned in
an inventory of the paintings belonging to her family as "a Venus of
life size reclining nude with a child who holds up for her a mirror
into which she gazes. This picture is an original work by Don Diego
Velazquez." In an account of the Duke of Alba's palace in 1776 it is
described as "the very celebrated Venus depicted from the back, in the
reclining posture, with her face reflected in a mirror towards which
she directs her gaze." Subsequently the picture became the property of
the Spanish statesmen, Godoy. In 1808 it was sold and brought to this
country; and purchased through Mr. Buchanan for the sum of £500, by Mr.
Morritt, the friend of Sir Walter Scott. It became an heirloom in Mr.
Morritt's family at Rokeby Hall, Teesdale. "Twice," says Dr. Justi in
his life of Velazquez, "in 1879 and 1885 I had the privilege of seeing
it there and convincing myself of its faultless preservation and the
original brilliancy and freshness of its colour." It was exhibited
in 1857 among the "Art Treasures" at Manchester and in 1890 at the
"Old Masters." It was ultimately sold under an order of the Court of
Chancery, the price obtained being £30,500. It passed into the hands
of Messrs. Agnew, and its sale out of this country was believed to be
imminent when the National Art Collections Fund came to the rescue and
raised by subscription the amount now necessary for its purchase.

The sum paid was £45,000,[259] and the picture was presented by the
Fund to the nation.


2058. SUNNY DAYS IN THE FOREST.

  _Diaz_ (French: 1809-1876).

      Narciso Virgilio Diaz de la Peña, one of the members of "the
      Barbizon School" (see p. 698), was born, of Spanish extraction,
      at Bordeaux. Left an orphan at the age of ten, he was adopted
      by a Protestant clergyman, living at Bellevue, near Sèvres.
      He was of a truant disposition, and sleeping once upon the
      grass in the woods he was bitten by a viper; the accident
      cost him his left leg, and he had to go through life with
      a wooden one, which he called his _pilon_. In after years,
      when his pictures were rejected at the Salon, he would make a
      hole in the canvas with his wooden leg, saying with a laugh
      "what's the use of being rich? I can't have my _pilon_ set in
      diamonds." His early years were of uncertain fortune, spent in
      earning a precarious living, sometimes as a painter on china
      at Sèvres, sometimes as an errand-boy in the streets. But he
      had confidence in his talent, and gradually found a market for
      his pictures. These were at first of figures, flowers, or other
      _genre_. A meeting in 1830 with Théodore Rousseau sent him to
      Fontainebleau and nature. For Rousseau, he entertained the most
      profound admiration, the story of "the toast of Diaz," is well
      known. Diaz had been preferred to Rousseau in admission to the
      Legion of Honour. In attending a dinner given in 1851 to the
      new _officiers_, Diaz rose and invited the company to drink "À
      Rousseau, notre maître oublié!" Of his figure-subjects, one of
      the best "La Fée aux Perles" is in the Louvre, but it is on his
      landscapes that his fame chiefly rests. "Go into the forest,"
      it has been said, "lose yourself among its trees, and you can
      only say 'À Diaz'." To him, however, the forest was not, as
      to some others of the school, or as to Ruysdael, sombre or
      serious. It was a keyboard on which to play colour-fantasies.
      "You paint stinging-nettles," he said to Millet, "I prefer
      roses." "Pearls," said Théophile Gautier of his pictures,
      "brilliant as precious stones, prismatic gems and rainbow
      jewels." His pictures have been called not so much landscapes,
      as "tree-scapes." "Have you seen my last stem?" he used to say
      himself to his visitors. But it was the play of sunlight on
      the stems that he chiefly loved. Diaz is the colourist of the
      Barbizon School.

The acquisition of this sparkling little picture of a glade in the
forest of Fontainebleau, lit by the afternoon sun, marked somewhat
of an era in the history of the National Gallery. It was the first
illustration on its walls of the modern French school of landscape.


2062. CHRIST TEACHING FROM ST. PETER'S SHIP.

  _Herman Saftleven_ (Dutch: 1609-1685).

      This painter, whose landscapes were praised by connoisseurs of
      the time as "distinguished by great care and accuracy," was
      born at Rotterdam, was a pupil of Jan van Goyen, and worked
      chiefly at Rotterdam and Utrecht. He painted many views on the
      Rhine and Maas; and one of the former, in the Dulwich Gallery,
      dated 1656, is among his best works.

The scene is the Lake of Gennesaret; the people are assembled on the
shore to hear the words of Christ who is seated in St. Peter's ship
(Luke v. 1-3).


2069. THE "MADONNA OF THE TOWER."

  _Raphael_ (Urbino: 1483-1520). _See 1171._

This picture is attributed to the earlier portion of Raphael's "Roman
period" (see p. 569); to about the same time, that is, as that of the
"Garvagh Madonna" (No. 744). It takes its commonly accepted name from
the small tower which may be seen in the distance of the landscape
background; it is sometimes referred to as "The Madonna with the
Standing Child," or "The Virgin with the Downcast Eyes," or "The
Rogers Madonna." It is painted on canvas, and has suffered much from
accident and repainting; but the feeling of the picture is thoroughly
Raphaelesque in purity of colour and charm of expression. The mother's
face is full of affection, sweet and yet serious; while the Child looks
out of the canvas, "as if unconscious of all but the joy of the moment."

The picture was formerly in the Orleans collection, whence it was
purchased by Mr. Willett in 1792 for £150. It next passed into the
collection of Mr. Henry Hope, at whose sale in 1816 it was bought
for 59 guineas by Samuel Rogers, the poet. "In the atmosphere of
St. James's Place," says a chronicler of the works from the Orleans
Collection which passed into the possession of Rogers, "they may
safely be said to have been worshipped with a purer incense than they
ever received before. We may be pardoned for recalling a few of them.
Foremost was a Raphael, one of the master's sweetest compositions, the
Child standing with one foot on his mother's hand. It had been reduced
by ruthless rubbings to a mere shadow, but the beauty was ineffaceable:
hanging--how well remembered!--in the best light on the left-hand wall
in the drawing-room. Then two glorious Titians--one of them, Christ
appearing to the Magdalene" (_Quarterly Review_, Oct. 1888). The
picture last mentioned is also now in the National Gallery (No. 270)
which possesses further from his collection, Nos. 269, 271, 276, 279.
At his sale in 1856 the Raphael was bought for 480 guineas by Mr. R. J.
Mackintosh, son of the historian, who exhibited it at Manchester in the
Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857; it was also shown at the Old Masters
in 1902. From him it passed to Miss Eva Mackintosh who has now (1906)
presented it to the nation. In the British Museum there is a cartoon of
the picture.


2078. THE HARBOUR OF TROUVILLE.

  _Louis Eugène Boudin_ (French: 1825-1898).

A view from within the harbour looking out to the open sea "between
the piers." Signed and dated "E. Boudin, '88," with the title on the
back in the artist's handwriting, "Entre les jetées, Trouville."
This picture by a fine sea-painter was presented by the National Art
Collections Fund.


2081. LULLI AND HIS FELLOW MUSICIANS AT THE FRENCH COURT.

  _Hyacinthe Rigaud_ (French, 1659-1743). _See 903._

Jean Baptiste de Lulli (or Lully) was the celebrated composer
(1633-1687) for whose music Louis XIV. had a great predilection. For
him the King created a new company of musicians called _Les Petits
Violons_ or _La Bande des Seize_. Lulli composed also the incidental
music for Molière's plays. The portraits of Lulli, says a contemporary,
are fairly like him, but he was smaller and stouter than they show.


2082. A FLORENTINE LADY; _on the reverse_, A SYMBOLIC ANGEL.

  _School of Botticelli_ (Florentine: 1447-1510). _See 1034._

The portrait is supposed to represent the unknown artist's wife; the
angel holds an armillary sphere.


2083. PORTRAIT OF DR. BATTISTA FIERA.

  _Lorenzo Costa_ (Ferrarese: 1460-1535). _See 629._

The portrait, "warts and all," of a theologian, physician, and poet
of Mantua. So he is described under the engraving of this picture,
which is the frontispiece to a book published at Padua in 1649 and
entitled _Baptistae Fierae Mantuani Medici sua aetate clarissimi Coena
notis illustrata a Carolo Avantio Rhodigino_. The portrait, a _chef
d'oeuvre_ of a painter whose portraits are rare, was shown at the
Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1894.


2084. A YOUNG MAN IN BLACK.

  _Florentine School._

"This picture has been attributed to Piero Pollajuolo and to the
painter known as 'Amico di Sandro'" (_National Gallery Report_, 1906).


2085. BIANCA CAPELLO.

  _School of Bronzino_ (Florentine: 1502-1572). _See 649._


2086. THE GATE WITH A ROUND TOWER.


2087. A PASTORAL LANDSCAPE.

  _Francesco Zuccarelli_ (Florentine: 1702-1788).

      This painter of decorative landscape was much employed in
      England, and during a sojourn here from 1752 to 1773 he became
      one of the foundation members of our Royal Academy.


2088. CHRIST TEACHING.

  _Bernardino Luini_ (Lombard: about 1475-1533). _See 18._

The face, attitude, and design are the same as in the Christ of No. 18;
but the beautiful expression is absent.


2089. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Lombard School_: 16th century.

Fresco on plaster; not unlike the work of Beltraffio.


2090, 2091. ANGELS.

  _Moretto_ (Brescian: 1498-1555). _See 299._

Companion figures, with wreaths of roses, inscribed (on the first) _Ave
Regina_, (on the second) _Coelorum_.


2092, 2093. ST. JOSEPH AND ST. JEROME.

  _Moretto_ (Brescian: 1498-1555). _See 299._


2094. IL CAVALIERE.

  _Moroni_ (Bergamese: 1525-1578). _See 697._


2095. A MAN IN BLACK.

  _Alvise Vivarini_ (Venetian: painted 1461-1503). _See 1872._

A fine portrait, hitherto attributed to Antonello da Messina, but now
assigned to Vivarini, on the analogy of similar busts attributed by Mr.
Berenson to that painter.


2096. THE MAN WITH A BEARD.

  _Romanino_ (Brescian: about 1485-1566). _See 297._


2097. THE LADY WITH THE CARNATIONS.

  _Paris Bordone_ (Venetian: 1500-1570). _See 637._


2098. S. MARIA DELLA SALUTE, VENICE.


2099. THE DUCAL PALACE, VENICE

  _Francesco Guardi_ (Venetian: 1712-1793). _See 210._

Excellent examples of the best manner of this painter.


2100. THE MARRIAGE OF THE EMPEROR FREDERICK I.

  _Tiepolo_ (Venetian: 1692-1769). _See 1192, 1193._

It is mentioned in the account of Tiepolo (under Nos. 1192, 1193)
that he executed wall-decorations in the Royal Palace, formerly the
episcopal residence, at Wurzburg. The present picture is almost the
same in composition as one of those. The subject--the marriage of
Frederick Barbarossa in 1156, to Beatrix, daughter of the Count of
Burgundy--lends itself well to Tiepolo's "feeling for splendour," and
swift mastery of decorative effect. The Imperial banner, emblazoned
with the black eagle, is borne by a warrior. The bishops of Wurzburg
were princes of the Empire.


2101. ESTHER AT THE THRONE OF AHASUERUS.

  _Sebastiano Ricci_ (Venetian: 1659-1734). _See 857._

An illustration of the Book of Esther (xv. 7-16); "Then lifting up his
countenance that shone with majesty, he looked very fiercely upon her,
and the queen fell down and was pale and fainted," etc.


2102, 2103. TOWN AND RIVER SCENES.

  _Jacopo Marieschi_ (Venetian: 1711-1794).

      By this painter, an imitator of Canaletto, two views of Venice
      were bought by the National Gallery from the Beauconsin
      Collection, but they were consigned to the National Gallery of
      Dublin.


2104. A MAN WITH A WIDE COLLAR.

  _Enrico Fiammingo._

      This painter of whom little is known, was a follower of
      Spagnoletto and Guido.


2105. A MAN WITH A POINTED BEARD.

  _Annibale Carracci_ (Bolognese: 1560-1609). _See 9._


2106. PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST.

  _Benedetto Gennari_ (Bolognese: 1633-1715).

      The artist was the nephew and scholar of Guercino. He came
      to England in 1674, and was for some time in the service
      of Charles II. and James II. "I once saw," says Lanzi, "a
      Bathsheba of Guercino, along with a copy by one of the Gennari.
      The former appeared as if newly painted at the time, and the
      latter as if many years previously, such was its inferiority
      in strength of hand.... Benedetto subsequently formed for
      himself a style in England, more polished and careful, and
      exemplified it more particularly in his portraits."


2107. HAGAR IN THE DESERT.

  _Salvator Rosa_ (Neapolitan: 1615-1673). _See 84._


2118. MADONNA AND CHILD.

  _Giovanni Francesco da Rimini_ (Umbrian: dated 1406).


2127. PORTRAIT OF THE MARCHESE GIOVANNI BATTISTA CATTANEO.

  _Van Dyck_ (Flemish: 1599-1641). _See 49._

It has been said in our notice of Van Dyck that many of his best works
are to be seen in Genoa. Two of the portraits made during his "Genoese
period" are now in our Gallery; having found their way to Paris and
thence to England from the palace of the Marchese Cattaneo in Genoa,
and having been bought by the Trustees from Messrs. Colnaghi. The
price paid for the picture before us was £13,500. The portrait has
not the pathetic charm of the "Gevartius" (52), to which it now forms
a pendant; but in strength and vitality it is one of the painter's
masterpieces. The Marchese lives before us, instinct with nervous
energy; seeming, as has been well said, "at once to interrogate the
spectator, and haughtily to repel interrogation."


2129. UNE PARADE.

  _Gabriel Jacques de Saint Aubin_ (French: 1724-1780).

      A pupil of Boucher; painter, first of heroic and then of
      domestic subjects; also an etcher.

Spectators watching a turn with the foils by two mountebanks.


2130. THE WATER LANE.

  _Jan Siberechts_ (Flemish: 1627-1703).

      It is very fitting that this painter, whose works in
      Continental galleries are rare, should be represented in ours;
      for it was the Duke of Buckingham, who brought him into
      vogue. Passing through Antwerp, the Duke was attracted by his
      work, and took him in his train to England, where, according
      to Walpole, he was much employed by the aristocracy. "Among
      the landscapes of the Flemish school," says an enthusiastic
      critic (A. J. Wauters), "there is not one of whom we think more
      highly. If his colouring lacks the brilliancy and the soft
      transparency of the tones of Rubens, it offers others both
      rare and unexpected at a time when the Flemish landscape was
      yet enslaved by conventional laws. Sieberechts boldly met the
      difficulties offered by open-air scenes and foreshadowed the
      daring colouring attempted by modern realism. His landscapes
      are true pastorals. He understood the art of giving his
      farm-girls and hinds real attitudes, taken from life; and how
      to make the various hues of vermilion and silver, blue and
      yellow of their costumes harmonise boldly together, which makes
      his works so charming, and gives them such a free and entirely
      personal character."


2133, 2134. "ROSES" AND "APPLES."

  _Henri Fantin-Latour_ (French: 1836-1904). _See 1686._


2135. THE MARSH OF ARLEUX-DU-NORD.

  _J. B. C. Corot_ (French: 1796-1875).

      Corot is one of those original painters who bring new aspects
      of nature and modes of beauty into ken. He is usually classed
      with the Barbizon School (see p. 691), but he stands alone with
      a peculiarly subtle and individual note of his own. "Rousseau,"
      he once said, "is an eagle; I am only a lark." His mood, though
      often tinged with melancholy, is tender, and delicate; what he
      loved was not the grandiose in form or colour, but rather all
      that was glimmering, uncertain, evanescent--such as the "shade
      by the light quivering aspen made," or delicate effects, at
      early dawn, or in moonlight. To read his letter on "the day of
      a landscapist"[260] is the best introduction to his art. "One
      rises early, at three o'clock in the morning before the sun is
      up, one goes and sits down at the foot of a tree, one looks and
      waits; he does not see much at first. Nature resembles a white
      tablecloth, where he can hardly distinguish the profiles of
      some of the masses. Everything is scented, everything trembles
      with the fresh breeze of the dawn." And then, again, when the
      sun has set: "Bien! bien! twilight commences. There is now
      in the sky only that soft vaporous colour of pale citron.
      One is losing sight of everything, but one still feels that
      everything is there. The birds, those voices of the flowers,
      say their evening prayer, the dew scatters pearls upon the
      grass, the nymphs fly ... everything is again darkened; the
      pond alone glitters. Good, there is my picture completed." It
      was only gradually that Corot reached the style upon which
      his fame rests. He was born in Paris of humble parents, and
      served for some years in a draper's shop. He was twenty-two
      before he was able to follow his artistic bent. He made the
      usual classical tour to Italy, and it was not till 1843 that
      he began to reveal the characteristic charm which he had found
      in French landscape. He painted what few eyes are wont to see
      and had to create the taste by which he was to be admired. But
      affluence came to him, and he gave as readily as he received.
      Many stories are told of his benevolence, and the love which he
      inspired is recorded in the title, "le père Corot," by which
      he was called. As a mark of their esteem his fellow-artists
      presented him with a gold medal shortly before his death. His
      last words were characteristic of his art and his life. It was
      his practice to sketch early and late in the open air, dreaming
      his pictures as he studied, and to "paint his dreams" in the
      studio. "Last night," he said as he lay on his death-bed,
      "I saw in a dream a landscape with a rosy sky; it will be
      marvellous to paint." He was seen to draw in the air with his
      fingers. "_Mon Dieu_" he said, "how beautiful that is; the most
      beautiful landscape I have ever seen." His old housekeeper
      offered to bring him his breakfast. He smiled and said, "To-day
      Père Corot will breakfast above."

This little picture is characteristic of one of Corot's tastes. "He
loved," we are told, "water in indetermined clearness and in the
shining glance of light, leaving it here in shadow and touching it
there with brightness. He loved morning before sunrise, when the white
mists hover over pools like a light veil of gauze; he had a passion for
evening which was almost greater; he loved the softer vapours which
gather in the gloom." (Muther.) The picture was painted in 1871, and
was purchased by Fantin-Latour at the posthumous sale of Corot's works.


2136. ENGRAVED PORTRAIT OF LULLY, THE MUSICIAN. _See 2081._


2143. LADY STANDING BY A SPINET.

  _Jacob Ochtervelt_ (Dutch: died before 1710).

      Jacob Ochtervelt (sometimes called wrongly Jan, and Achtervelt
      or Uchtervelt) was born probably at Rotterdam. He formed
      his style on the model of Terburg, to whom his pictures are
      sometimes attributed (see, for instance, an example in the
      Venice Academy formerly given to Terburg).

A beautiful example of a painter, by whom pictures in good condition
are rare--a harmony in pink and grey and brown. There is poetical
feeling, too, in the lady's attitude and the man who looks up intently
at her; as also some humour in the dog turning his attention to an
intruder.


2144. LA MARCHESA CATTANEO.

  _Van Dyck_ (Flemish: 1599-1641). _See 49._

A companion picture to No. 2127.


2162. PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST.

  _Joseph Ducreux_ (French: 1735-1802).

The artist is dressed as a French Abbé, with powdered hair.


2163. THE MAGDALEN.

  _Mabuse_ (Flemish: 1470-1541). _See 656._


2204. INTERIOR OF A CHURCH.

  _Hendrick Steenwyck_ (Flemish: 1580-1649). _See 1132._

Dated 1615. The nave of a Gothic church; in the distance a funeral
procession is entering the choir; beggars and dogs in the foreground.


2205. INTERIOR OF A CHURCH.

  _Pieter Neeffs_ (Flemish: 1577-1661). _See 924._

A night scene in a church of Renaissance architecture. On a tomb on the
floor is an inscription--"632 Hier legt begraven Henri Steenwick."


2206. VESPERS.


2207. AFTER VESPERS.

  _Pieter Neeffs._

The chapel in No. 2207 is the same as that on the left in No. 2206.


2209. ULRICUS SIROSENIUS, DUKE OF EAST FRIESLAND.

  _Cornelissen_ (Dutch: about 1475-1555). _See 657._

The title is written on the back of the oak panel. The Duke's sword is
inscribed--"Victor est qui nomen Domini pugnavit." Among other versions
of this portrait is one in the Oldenburg Gallery, attributed to Lucas
van Leyden. Another (in the Duke of Rutland's collection) has Dürer's
monogram.


2211. JACQUELINE DE BOURGOGNE.

  _Mabuse_ (Flemish: about 1470-1541). _See 656._

The beautiful costume and jewellery should be noticed; the girl holds
an orrery. This picture was shown in the Golden Fleece Exhibition at
Bruges in 1907.


2216. "LA MAIN CHAUDE."

  _Jean François de Troy_ (French: 1679-1752).

      This painter (pupil of his father, François de Troy) was
      employed by Louis XIV. to execute designs for tapestry in the
      grand style, and he carved out much decorative work. Sets
      of some of the tapestries from his designs are in the State
      Apartments in Windsor Castle. Subsequently, he adopted the
      style of Watteau, and painted "conversations galantes," such
      as in the example before us. Other specimens of his work may
      be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and in the Wallace
      collection.


2217. ELISA BONAPARTE, GRAND DUCHESS OF TUSCANY.

  _J. L. David_ (French: 1748-1825).

      Jacques Louis David, the founder of the "classical school"
      in France and for many years the Dictator of French art,
      was a nephew of Boucher, from whom he received his first
      instruction. His celebrated "Oath of the Horatii" (1784)
      and "Brutus" (1789), and other works of the kind, are in the
      Louvre. They were not without influence on the politics of the
      time, and David was elected a representative of Paris in the
      Convention in 1792. He became a follower of Robespierre, and
      naturally escaped execution. Abandoning politics, he became
      acquainted with Napoleon, who made him his First Painter.
      On the restoration of the Bourbons, he sought refuge in
      Brussels, where he died. Many of his Napoleonic pictures are at
      Versailles.

A vigorous portrait-sketch of Elisa, sister of Napoleon, whom he made
Duchess of Tuscany, with the titles of Duchess of Lucca and Princess
of Piombino. She was born in 1777 and died in 1820. We see her here in
white empire costume.


2218. MADAME MALIBRAN.

  _J. A. D. Ingres_ (French: 1780-1867).

A study of the famous singer; attributed to Jean Auguste Dominique
Ingres, a pupil of David, who imparted a grace of his own to the
Classical School.


2251. PORTRAIT OF BONA OF SAVOY.

  _Ambrogio de Predis_ (Milanese: about 1450-1515). _See 1661._

This striking full-length figure of a lady, richly attired and wearing
jewels, was No. 7 in the exhibition of pictures by Milanese masters
at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1894. It was then described as a
portrait of Beatrice d'Este.


2256. RIVER SCENE.


2257. ILEX TREES, VILLEFRANCHE.

  _Henri Harpignies_ (French: born 1819).

      These two pictures, recently presented to the Gallery, are
      slight examples of the work, in oil and water-colour, of an
      artist who travelled with Corot and continued that master's
      method of interpreting nature.


2258. A WOODLAND SCENE.

  _Georges Michel_ (French: 1763-1843).

A good example of an artist who has been called "the Ruysdael of
Montmartre."


2281. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Lorenzo Lotto_ (Venetian: 1480-1556). _See 699._

The Virgin, a pretty woman prettily dressed, is seated between St.
Jerome and St. Anthony of Padua, who holds in his hand a "Madonna
lily." This bright and dainty picture belongs to the year 1522 (see
Berenson's _Lorenzo Lotto_, 1895, p. 187).


2282. THE BOHEMIANS.

  _Philips Wouwerman_ (Dutch: 1619-1668). _See 878._


2283. DAWN.

  _Aart van der Neer_ (Dutch: 1603-1677). _See 152._


2285. A FAMILY GROUP.

  _Frans Hals_ (Dutch: 1580-1666). _See 1021._

An important accession to the Gallery, as an example of the large
portrait-groups in which Hals excelled. The composition whereby the ten
figures are all brought into a group is ingenious--the part played by
the direction of the elder boy's attention to the other being in this
respect important--though in colour the harmony is somewhat disturbed
by the emphatic lights of the lace and linen worn by each member of
the group. There is individual character in all the portraits; among
the figures which most compel admiration are those of the mother, full
of quiet dignity, of the eldest daughter, standing on the right with a
work-basket in her hand (both beautifully painted), and of the little
girl seated in front. The picture unknown to the connoisseurs before
its acquisition for the National Gallery--was purchased in 1908 from
Lord Talbot de Malahide for £25,000.


2288. PORTRAIT OF DR. FORLENZE.

  _Jacques Antoine Vallin_ (French: 1770-1838).

Dr. J. N. B. Forlenze (1769-1833) was a physician and man of fashion
in Naples. He had visited England and studied under John Hunter; and
practised as an oculist in Paris. This portrait was exhibited at the
Salon in 1808.


2289. ATTILA: AN ALLEGORY.

  _F. V. E. Delacroix_ (French: 1798-1863).

      Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was the chief of the
      "Romantic" school in painting, which in literature was
      represented by de Musset, George Sand, and Victor Hugo. The
      Romanticists revolted against the art of the Classicists as
      cold, formal, and colourless. Delacroix, whose admiration
      was for Byron in poetry and for Rubens in painting, sought
      before all things passion, emotion, and colour. He had, says
      Silvestre, "the sun in his head and a thunderstorm in his
      heart, and his grandiose and awe-inspiring brush sounded the
      entire gamut of human emotion." He loved strong colour, and he
      was one of many French artists who were influenced by the sight
      of Constable's pictures in the Salon. His pictures were as
      fiercely assailed, as they were furiously painted. "It is the
      massacre of painting," said Baron Gros of Delacroix's "Massacre
      of Chios." "I became the abomination of painting," said the
      artist, "I was refused water and salt;" but, he added, "I was
      enchanted with myself," and he won his way into favour. He was
      born at Charenton St. Maurice, near Paris. His father, who
      held high office under the First Empire, had been a partisan
      of the violent faction during the Revolution, and, like some
      other revolutionaries, was more consumed with public ardour
      than concerned with private affairs. The boy was exposed to
      accidents and neglect in his childhood which make one wonder
      that he survived. He had poor health throughout life, and there
      was in him a hectic strain which was reflected in his art. In
      1817 he entered the studio of Guérin, where he had Ary Scheffer
      (see 1169) for a fellow-pupil and antagonist, and afterwards
      he worked under Baron Gros. He was deeply stirred by the War
      of Greek Independence; and a visit which he paid to Morocco
      and Algiers in 1831 had the effect of enriching his sense of
      colour. He had a strong supporter in Thiers, through whose
      influence he received many important commissions for public
      works--in the decoration of the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and the
      Chamber of Deputies. Our picture was a design for the latter.
      These and other large works occupied him till 1855; and at last
      in 1857 he was admitted into the French Academy.

In this characteristic design the spirit of Ruthless Conquest is
personified in the figure of Attila, the leader of the Huns, called
"The Scourge of God." He drives before him, beneath a blood-red sky and
amid the ghosts of the slain, figures emblematic of Beauty, Art, and
Pleasure.


2290. PARC DE SANSAC, INDRE-ET-LOIRE.

  _Armand Charnay_ (French: born 1844).

      Jean Marie Armand Charnay, born at Charlieu (Loire); in 1864
      entered the École des Beaux-Arts; genre and landscape painter.

This picture of autumn in the walks of a French château was presented
by the artist.


2291. PORTRAIT OF CARDINAL DE RETZ.

  _Philippe de Champaigne_ (French: 1602-1674). _See 798._

A portrait, in Cardinal's cape and skull-cap, of Jean François Paul
de Gondi (1614-1679), Archbishop of Paris, and afterwards Cardinal de
Retz. As Archbishop, he aided the rising of the Fronde against Mazarin.
In 1652 he was arrested and imprisoned; he escaped, and for some years
wandered abroad. In 1662 he was received into favour by Louis XIV.,
and in his later years was often employed as an envoy to Rome. He is
described as having been in his youth short, near-sighted, ugly, and
exceedingly awkward.


2292. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Michiel Jansz van Mirevelt_ (Dutch: 1567-1641).

      Mirevelt (or Miereveld) was the son of an engraver on precious
      metals at Delft, and was trained as an engraver. He afterwards
      entered the studio of Blocklandt at Utrecht, and devoted
      himself to historical painting, still-life, and other subjects.
      Presently he painted the portraits of some of the princes of
      the House of Nassau, and these were so much admired that he
      came into continuous request in that branch of art. Sandrart
      relates that Mirevelt claimed to have painted nearly 10,000
      portraits; doubtless an exaggeration, but "it may be said that
      it was he who made the custom of having portraits painted
      general in the United Provinces. His painting, thin, clean
      finished, and rather cold, was intended to please his elegant
      clients" (Havard).

This lady's stomacher embroidered with rows of pearls and pleated lace
ruff are finely painted.


2293. HOLY FAMILY.

  Ascribed to _Luca Penni_ (Roman: born about 1500).

      One of the scholars and assistants of Raphael; after whose
      death Penni is said to have attached himself to Perino del
      Vaga. Subsequently he became an engraver.


2294. PORTRAIT OF GALILEO.

  _Passignano_ (Florentine: 1558-1638).

      Domenico Cresti, called Il Passignano from his native place,
      a village near Florence, was a pupil of Zuccaro. Moving to
      Venice, he studied for a while under Paolo Veronese, whose
      works he greatly admired and whose manner he followed. His
      facility and rapidity caused a play upon his surname, and he
      was called "Passa ognuno."

The great astronomer (1564-1642) is represented with astrolabe, books,
diagram, and compasses.


2295. PORTRAIT OF A MILITARY COMMANDER.

  _Frans Pourbus, the younger_ (Flemish: 1569-1622).

      Pourbus, son of Frans Pourbus the elder, was born at Antwerp,
      and by 1591 was a master in the Guild of St. Luke. He was
      employed by the Archduke Albert at Antwerp, at whose court
      he attracted the notice of the Duke of Mantua. The Duke took
      him into his service (1600-1609), and he shared with Rubens
      the title of Painter to the Ducal Court. At Mantua he worked
      at "a collection of the most beautiful women in the world,
      whether princesses or private ladies." Like Rubens, Pourbus was
      occasionally employed as Ambassador, and a mission to Paris
      caused him to forsake Italy for France. Eleanor of Mantua was
      a sister of Marie de' Medici, and Pourbus finally settled in
      Paris as Painter to the Queen. There is a portrait of the queen
      by him at Hampton Court.


2423. LITHOGRAPHS OF HORSES.

  _J. L. A. T. Géricault_ (French: 1791-1824).

      Jean Louis André Théodore Géricault, animal and historical
      painter, was a precursor of the revolt of the Romanticists
      against the Classicists, which was carried further by Delacroix
      (see 2289). His most famous picture, "The Raft of the Medusa"
      (Louvre), was exhibited at the Salon in 1819 and excited much
      controversy. He was the son of a prosperous advocate; and as
      a young man became a member of the Jockey Club, and lived the
      life of the _jeunesse dorée_. He had some instruction in art
      from Charles Vernet and Guérin, but his real master was Rubens
      in the Louvre. In 1816 he went to Italy. After 1819 he visited
      England, where he practised the then new art of lithography.
      His picture of "The Derby at Epsom" (1821) is in the Louvre.


2439. A RIVER SCENE.

  _P. E. Théodore Rousseau_ (French: 1812-1867).

      Rousseau, one of the founders of the modern school of
      landscape in France, had to fight his way to fame through
      many difficulties and much neglect. The toast of Diaz, "à
      notre maître oublié," has been already recorded (p. 691).
      For thirteen years (1835-1848) his pictures were rejected
      from the Salon; and official honours came to him tardily. He
      had his revenge in the Exhibition of 1855, when his rejected
      pictures "came back as victorious exiles," and again in that
      of 1867, when he was chosen president of the jury. But he
      was of a sensitive and jealous disposition; he was estranged
      from his best friend, Dupré, and chagrin at being passed over
      for promotion in the Legion of Honour in 1867 is said to
      have hastened his death. A pleasanter episode in his life is
      his generous and timely help to Millet. The heads of the two
      artists are carved together on his tombstone in the cemetery
      of Chailly, near Barbizon. He was born in Paris, the son of a
      merchant-tailor. He studied painting under Rémond and Guillon
      Lethière, and first exhibited at the Salon in 1831. His
      pictures in successive years were loudly trumpeted by Thoré as
      those of an innovator, and for that reason perhaps excited the
      more hostility among the old school. His favourite ground was
      the forest of Fontainebleau, and he made his home at Barbizon,
      studying every aspect of nature with intense application. "It
      is a good composition," he wrote, "when the objects represented
      are not there solely as they are, but when they contain under
      a natural appearance the sentiments which they have stirred in
      our souls. If we contest that the trees have power of thought,
      at any rate we may allow that they can make us think; and in
      return for all the modesty of which they make use to elevate
      our thoughts, we owe them, as recompense, not arrogant freedom
      or pedantic and classic style, but the sincerity of a grateful
      attention in the reproduction of their being." There is a good
      example of his forest-pictures in the Wallace Collection.

Rousseau was the most various of the landscape painters of his time.
In the present picture we see him in a peaceful mood; another picture
(2635) is of a stormy sky.


2475. CHRISTINA, DUCHESS OF MILAN.

  _Hans Holbein_ (German: 1497-1543). _See 1314._

Amongst Holbein's duties as painter to Henry VIII. was that of taking
portraits of the ladies whom he proposed in turn to wed. After the
death of Jane Seymour, the first favourite was the lady before us, "the
demure half-smile not yet faded from her eyes"--Christina, daughter
of Christian II. of Denmark, niece of the Emperor Charles V., and
widow of the Duke of Milan. Reasons of state suggested her marriage
to Henry VIII., and Holbein was sent to Brussels, where the Duchess
was residing. Our portrait was painted a few years later than "The
Ambassadors," from a sketch made at Brussels on March 12, 1538. The
circumstances are entertainingly told in the letters of the English
envoy, John Hutton, to Thomas Cromwell. On the 10th August Hutton
had sent off a portrait by another artist to Henry VIII., that he
might judge of the appearance of the young Duchess before making her
a proposal of marriage. The next evening "Mr. Haunce" (_i.e._ Hans
Holbein) arrived in company of a servant of the king, whereupon Hutton
sent off an express-courier to fetch back the picture he had already
despatched, "for that in my opinion," he said, "it was not so perfect
as the case required, neither as the said Mr. Haunce could make it."
"The next day following at one of the clock in the afternoon, the
said Lord Benedick came for Mr. Haunce, who, having but three hours'
space, both showed himself to be master of that science, for it is very
perfect; the other is but slobbered in comparison to it, as, by the
sight of both, your Lordships shall well perceive."

The original--the study, sketch, or miniature, the result of
three hours' hard work--has disappeared; but the picture which
the master made from it after he came home is now before us. The
portrait, it would seem, did not make the king less anxious for the
match--which, however, was broken off, it will be remembered, after
long negotiations, by the hostility of the emperor. The duchess, in
spite of her tender years, seems--and the picture does not belie the
supposition--to have had a character of her own. The story of her
reply, "that she had but one head, but that if she had two, one should
be at the service of his majesty," is, indeed, now discredited; but
her actual answer, "You know I am the Emperor's poor servant and
must follow his pleasure," was, in the light of subsequent events,
equally to the point. The English envoy specially reported "her honest
countenance and the few words she wisely spoke."

The beautiful portrait before us was retained by Henry VIII., and
through the Lumley, Pembroke, and Arundel Collections it passed
into that of the Dukes of Norfolk. "Whether as a pictorial record
of an interesting chapter of our history, or as an example of the
presentment of a fresh and winning young personality by the most
masterful and at the same time most reserved and refined methods of the
painter's craft, the picture counts among the very noblest of the art
treasures still left in England. That it is so left is mainly due to
the splendid generosity of a small group of private donors, the chief
of whom elude our public thanks by choosing firmly to remain anonymous.
At the eleventh hour, when the picture was on the very point of leaving
our shores to enrich a private gallery in America, these benefactors
came forward and enabled the Committee of the National Art-Collections'
Fund to present the masterpiece to the nation." The price paid was
£72,000. (_Report of the National Art-Collections' Fund_, 1909;
Froude's _History of England_, ch. xv.) The picture had for many years
been lent to the National Gallery by the Duke of Norfolk.[261]


2480. THE FISH MARKET.

  _Philippe Rousseau_ (French: 1816-1887).

      Born in Paris; first exhibited at the Salon in 1834, "A View in
      Normandy"; afterwards made his reputation, and attained great
      popularity as a painter of still-life.


2482. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Benvenuto da Siena_ (Sienese: 1436-1518).

This painter is better seen in the larger picture, No. 909.


2483. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Fiorenzo di Lorenzo_ (Umbrian: 1440-1521).


2484. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _L'Ingegno_ (Umbrian: painted 1484-1511). _See 1220._

The donor and his wife kneel in adoration before the Virgin and Child
enthroned between St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena. The picture
was formerly in Lord Dudley's collection.


2485. SALOME.

  _Cesare da Sesto_ (Lombard: 1477-1523).

      Leonardo da Vinci was "very successfully installed," says
      Vasari, "by Cesare da Sesto, who was also a Milanese." Cesare
      was born at Sesto Calende on the Lago Maggiore, and is supposed
      to have worked under Leonardo in Milan, 1507-1512. At Rome he
      was, according to Lomazzo, an intimate friend of Raphael.

The daughter of Herodias, with a face of haunting beauty, points to a
vase, over which the executioner holds the head of John the Baptist.
The table on which it rests has sphinxes for supports. This picture is
a replica with variations of the one by Cesare in the Vienna Gallery,
and is said to have come from the Barberini Palace in 1799.


2486. A CONCERT.

  _Ercole Roberti de' Grandi_ (Ferrarese: 1450-1496). _See 1127._

This picture was No. 14 at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1894, where
it was ascribed to Lorenzo Costa. "In type, the woman resembles one
of the daughters of Bentivoglio II., and it may be that this group
of musicians contains family portraits of the reigning house of the
Bentivogli at Bologna."


2487. BARTOLOMMEO BIANCHINI.

  _Francia_ (Bolognese: 1450-1517). _See 180._

This picture, an early work by Francia, is an admirable example of
the artist as a portrait-painter. It is "a marvel of fine condition,
and betrays the technique of the goldsmith seeking for the quality of
enamel. Bianchini was a Bolognese senator, collector, poet, and friend
of Francia." Upon a "Holy Family" in the Berlin Museum is inscribed--

  Bartholomei sumptu Bianchini maxima matrum
  Hic vivit manibus, Francia, picta tuis.

Our portrait, from the collection of the Princesse de Sagan, was No. 23
at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1894.


2488. THE HOLY FAMILY.

  _Luca Signorelli_ (Cortona: 1441-1523). _See 1128._


2489. THE YOUNG FLORENTINE.

  _Domenico Ghirlandajo_ (Florentine: 1449-1494). _See 1230._

The portrait of the man in his red-coloured robe and black skull-cap
is set against a landscape background. Many other examples of a like
treatment will have been noticed by the visitor; as, for instance, in
the fine portrait by Ridolfo Ghirlandajo (2491). And it is interesting
to observe how long this convention survived, though with variations.
The advantage of introducing an object of locally dark colour behind
the head was perceived, and a background of curtain or other drapery
was used; but a piece of it was drawn back, so as still to display
landscape. See, _e.g._, Basaiti's portrait (2498). Or, again, a window
was opened with the same purpose. See, _e.g._, Piombo's portrait of
a Venetian lady as Salome (2493) and Cariani's of a Venetian magnate
(2494). A corresponding development may be traced in Madonna pictures.
Often the Virgin and Child are placed in an open landscape, as in the
beautiful "Madonna of the Meadow" (599). When they are brought indoors
a curtain is drawn back (2503), or a window opened--_e.g._ 2496, 2609,
and (Flemish School) 2595.


2490. COSTANZA DE' MEDICI.

  _Lorenzo di Credi_ (Florentine: 1459-1537). _See 593._

The inscription records that the lady was the wife of Francis, Duke of
Gaeta. This portrait was formerly ascribed to D. Ghirlandajo.


2491. GIROLAMO BENEVIENI.

  _Ridolfo Ghirlandajo_ (Florentine: 1483-1561). _See 1143._

This fine portrait is of "a very learned man," and an intimate friend
of Lorenzo di Credi, who also, as Vasari relates, painted him. The
background is studied from that in Leonardo's "Mona Lisa."


2492. VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ANGELS ADORING.

  _Jacopo del Sellaio_ (Florentine: 1442-1493).

      This painter is mentioned by Vasari as among the pupils of Fra
      Filippo Lippi. He worked in the manner of Botticelli, and No.
      916 in our gallery is now ascribed to him.


2493. SALOME.

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


2494. AN ITALIAN GENTLEMAN.

  _Cariani_ (Bergamese: about 1480-1541). _See 1203._

A vigorously-painted portrait of a personage of some importance or
self-importance; perhaps, as the official catalogue suggests, "the
principal citizen of some provincial town." His robe is of gold
brocade, and he handles his gold chain. It may be a view of his town
that is shown through the open window.


2495. "OUR LADY OF THE LAURELS."

  _Cariani_ (Bergamese: about 1480-1541). _See 1203._

This fine picture, known as _La Vierge aux Lauriers_ from its
background of a laurel-bush (and roses), was formerly in the
Leuchtenberg Collection at St. Petersburg, where it was ascribed to
Giorgione.


2496. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Beltraffio_ (Lombard: 1467-1516). _See 728._


2497. VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. JOHN.

  _School of Botticelli_ (Florentine: 1447-1510). _See 1034._


2498. A YOUNG VENETIAN.

  _Marco Basaiti_ (Venetian: painted 1500-1521). _See 281._

Signed on the parapet. The young Venetians, it will be noticed, wore
their hair long, and carried great weights of it at the sides of their
faces: compare, _e.g._, No. 1121 (Catena), 2509 (Vivarini).


2499. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Marco Basaiti_ (Venetian: painted 1500-1521).

This picture, if No. 599 be indeed by the same hand, must be an early
work; the face and figure, both of mother and of child, are ugly and
ungainly. The picture is signed in the left corner.


2500. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Andrea Previtali_ (Bergamese: about 1480-1528). _See 695._


2501. SALVATOR MUNDI.

  _Previtali_ (Bergamese: about 1480-1528). _See 695._

Inscribed on the parapet "Andreas Privitalus, p." and dated 1518.


2502. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Bastiano Mainardi_ (Tuscan: died 1513).

      This painter was the pupil, favourite assistant, and
      brother-in-law of Domenico Ghirlandajo (see 1230). He was born
      at San Gimignano, in the churches of which place pictures by
      him are to be seen.

The beautiful painting of jewellery, and the fine patterns, should not
escape notice.


2503. HOLY FAMILY.

  _Antonio da Solario_ (Venetian: 15th-16th century).

This beautiful picture is signed on a cartellino "Antonius da Solario
V"(enetus).


2504. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Cesare da Sesto_ (Milanese: 1477-1523). _See 2485._


2505. DAVID AND JONATHAN.

  _Cima da Conegliano_ (Venetian: 1460-1518). _See 300._

This little picture, of David (carrying the head of Goliath) walking
with Jonathan, was formerly in the Modici collection at Naples.


2506. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Cima_ (Venetian: 1460-1518).

Formerly in the Patrizi collection at Rome.


2507. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Bartolommeo Veneziano_ (painted 1505-1530). _See 287._

From the Castellani collection.


2508. VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ANGELS.

  _Unknown_ (Florentine School: 15th century).

Two charming angels, of whom one is garlanded with roses, hold the
child before the Virgin. The scene is laid within the walls of the
mystical garden ("a garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse"), behind
which rise "Noah's ark" trees.


2509. PORTRAIT OF A YOUTH.

  _Alvise Vivarini_ (Venetian: painted 1461-1503). _See 1872._

"The portrait of a boy of fifteen or sixteen, a little defiant or shy,
yet frank in look, with a blond _zazzera_ (head of hair) cropped short
over the eyebrows, wearing a coat of pale turquoise blue. Formerly
in the Duchatel collection at Paris, where it was seen by Messrs.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle." By them ascribed to Andrea da Solario (see
734); formerly, to Antonello (see 673); now, on the authority of Mr.
Berenson, to Alvise: see Berenson's _Lorenzo Lotto_, pp. 110-1.


2510. A PORTRAIT.

  _Unknown_ (Umbrian School: 15th century).

Possibly a portrait of the young Raphael.


2511. A MUSICIAN.

  _Giulio Campi_ (Cremona: 1502-1572).

      A master at the School of Cremona, who worked in the great
      church there with Boccaccino (see 806). There are also works by
      him at Mantua, where he is said to have studied under Giulio
      Romano.


2512. THE MAGDALEN.

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

"The art of Correggio with its deep sense of beauty and its tender
sensibility was peculiarly fitted," says Signor Ricci, "to give life
and grace to the figure of the Magdalen. He introduced it in many of
his large compositions, and made it the subject of several separate
studies, but not one of the latter has survived." If this be an
authentic work, the statement requires correction; but the head of the
Magdalen is not convincingly Correggiesque.


2513. VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH SAINTS.

  _Tiepolo_ (Venetian: 1692-1769). _See 1192._


2514-2516. VIEWS IN VENICE.

  _Canaletto_ (Venetian: 1697-1768). _See 127._

No. 2514 shows the Grand Canal, with the church of the Scalzi; No.
2515, the square of St. Mark's, seen through an archway; No. 2516,
the Colonnade of the Procuratie Nuove. The white spots with which
the figures are picked out are not a happy instance of Canaletto's
workmanship.


2517-2523. VARIOUS VIEWS.

  _Guardi_ (Venetian: 1712-1793). _See 210._

No. 2517, "Buildings and Figures"; 2518, "Gothic Archway and Figures";
2519, "Venetian Courtyard"; 2520, "Quay-side with Warehouses"; 2521,
"Ruins"; 2522, "Treasure-Seekers"; 2523, "View through an Archway."


2524. THE TOWER OF MESTRE.

  _Guardi_ (Venetian: 1712-1793). _See 210._

It was at Mestre that travellers in old days took gondola for Venice,
and the tower was a familiar landmark. Ruskin mentions it in his
description of the approach to Venice (_Stones_, vol. i. last chapter).


2525. VENICE: PIAZZA DI SAN MARCO.

  _Guardi_ (Venetian: 1712-1793).

A good example of the deep, rich colour which Guardi gives to his
Venetian subjects: see under 210.


2526. PEASANT AND CHILD.

  _Unknown_ (Spanish: 17th century).

      This unfinished picture (once in the collection of the Earl
      of Clare) has been ascribed to Pedro Nuñez de Villavicencio
      (1630-1700). He was a Knight of the Order of St. John of
      Jerusalem, a distinguished amateur-painter and a favourite
      pupil of Murillo, who died in his arms.


2527. CHARLES MORDAUNT, EARL OF MONMOUTH.

  _Juan Giacchinetti Gonzalez_ (Spanish: 1630-1696).

      A portrait-painter, who was a great admirer of Titian and a
      diligent copyist of his works. He was the son of a Burgundian
      jeweller settled at Madrid, and he was born in that city.
      He removed to Italy, where he was called, from his skill in
      portraiture, _Il Borgognone dalle teste_ (the Burgundian of the
      heads). He practised his art in Brescia and Bergamo, and died
      in the latter city.


2528. THE MAN WITH THE GLOVE.

  _Frans Hals_ (Dutch: 1580-1666). _See 1021._

An excellent example of the "irresistible verve" which Hals brings to
his portraits, especially to those of men: see under 1021. To what is
there said, it may be interesting to add the opinion of Sir Joshua
Reynolds. "In the work of Frank Hals, the portrait-painter may observe
the composition of a face, the features well put together, as the
painters express it; from whence proceeds that strong-marked character
of individual nature, which is so remarkable in his portraits, and is
not found in an equal degree in any other painter. If he had joined
to this most difficult part of the art, a patience in finishing what
he had so correctly planned, he might justly have claimed the place
which Vandyck, all things considered, so justly holds as the first of
portrait-painters" (_Sixth Discourse_).


2529. THE LADY WITH THE FAN.

  _Frans Hals_ (Dutch: 1580-1666). _See 1021._


2530. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

  _Cornelis Janssens_ (Dutch: 1594-1664). _See 1320._

Sir Joshua Reynolds has some interesting remarks on the technique of
Janssens. "There is a kind of finishing," he says, "which may safely be
condemned, as it seems to counteract its own purpose; that is, when the
artist, to avoid that hardness which proceeds from the outline cutting
against the ground, softens and blends the colours to excess: this is
what the ignorant call high finishing, but which tends to destroy the
brilliancy of colour, and the true effect of representation; which
consists very much in preserving the same proportion of sharpness and
bluntness that is found in natural objects. This extreme softening,
instead of producing the effect of softness, gives the appearance of
ivory, or some other hard substance, highly polished. The portraits of
Cornelius Janssen appear to have this defect, and consequently want
that suppleness which is the characteristic of flesh; whereas, in the
works of Vandyck, we find that true mixture of softness and hardness
perfectly observed" (_Eleventh Discourse_).


2531. CHURCH OF ST. BAVON, HAARLEM.

  _Pieter Saenredam_ (Dutch: 1597-1665). _See 1896._

In No. 1451 (by Berck-Heyde) we see the interior of the same church;
in the present picture, no public service is going on. In each case a
dog is a church-goer; here in front of the pew on the left, where a man
kneels down in prayer, a dog kneels up.


2532. A WOMAN DRIVING SHEEP.


2533. A SANDY LANE.

  _Jan Wynants_ (Dutch: about 1615-1679). _See 883._


2534. RIVER SCENE, WITH HORSEMAN.

  _Aart van der Neer_ (Dutch: 1603-1677). _See 152._


2535. JUDITH.

  _Eglon Hendrik van der Neer_ (Dutch: 1635-1703).

      Eglon was the pupil of his father, the landscape-painter, Aart
      van der Neer; but the son's taste took the direction rather of
      interiors and portraits. He also painted some Biblical subjects.

A costume piece: note the richly embroidered white satin dress of
Judith.


2536. MOONLIGHT.


2537. LANDSCAPE: WITH A CART IN THE FOREGROUND.

  _Aart van der Neer_ (Dutch: 1603-1677). _See 152._


2538. DIANA BATHING.

  _Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See 43._

A characteristically "Rembrandtesque" effect, the light concentrated on
the principal figure.


2539. A MAN WITH A CAP.

  _Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See 43._

This fine portrait-study was formerly in the collection of the Duke of
Sutherland.


2540. THE HURDY-GURDY.

  _Adrian van Ostade_ (Dutch: 1610-1685). _See 846._

Peasants listening to a man playing the hurdy-gurdy. Signed in the left
foreground "A. V. Ostade, 1653." Formerly in the collection of Lord
Dudley (at whose sale in 1892 it fetched £1470).


2541. THE COBBLER.


2542. COURTSHIP.


2543. A MAN WITH A JUG.

  _Adrian van Ostade_ (Dutch: 1610-1685). _See 846._


2544. THE CART.

  _Isaac van Ostade_ (Dutch: 1621-1649). _See 847._


2545. RIVER SCENE.


2546. LADY AND CHILD IN A LANDSCAPE.

  _Cuyp_ (Dutch: 1620-1691). _See 53._


2547. CATTLE WITH HERDSMEN.

  _Cuyp_ (Dutch: 1620-1691). _See 53._

Shown at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition in 1857.


2548. BOY HOLDING A GREY HORSE.

  _Cuyp_ (Dutch: 1620-1691). _See 53._


2549. THE TAILOR'S SHOP.


2550. THE AFTERNOON NAP.

  _Quiryn Brekelenham_ (Dutch: 1625-1668). _See 1329._


2551. A WOMAN SCOURING PANS.

  _Pieter van den Bosch_ (Dutch: 1613-1660).

      A painter of Amsterdam. The year of his death is not known;
      1660 is the date of the last mention of him in extant
      documents. A deed of 1645 records that the painter bound
      himself, at a yearly fee of 1200 gulden, to work exclusively
      for a certain picture-dealer, from 7 a.m. till dusk, daily,
      Sundays and Festivals alone excepted.


2552. REFUSING THE GLASS.

  _Pieter de Hooch_ (Dutch: 1630-about 1677). _See 794._

Formerly in the collections of Pierre de Grand Pré (Paris) and the Earl
of Shaftesbury.


2553. A LADY AT HER TOILET.

  _Jacob Ochtervelt_ (Dutch: died before 1710). _See 2143._


2554. SADDLING A HORSE.

  _Wouwerman_ (Dutch: 1619-1668). _See 878._


2555. WOMAN ASLEEP.


2556. THE PEDLAR.


2557. MERRY MAKERS.

  _Jan Steen_ (Dutch: 1626-1679). _See 856._


2558. GRACE BEFORE MEAT.

  _Jan Steen_ (Dutch: 1626-1679). _See 856._

Steen, though he loved scenes of rollicking conviviality and was fond
of sly humour, by no means confined himself to such moods. His brush
traced every episode of family life, and this little piece is as pretty
as one of the "Graces for Children" in Herrick's _Noble Numbers_:--

    What God gives, and what we take,
    'Tis a gift for Christ his sake;
    Be the meal of Beans and Pease,
    God be thanked for those and these.

This picture was formerly in the Leuchtenberg Collection at St.
Petersburg.


2559. THE OYSTER FEAST.


2560. THE SKITTLE PLAYERS.

  _Jan Steen_ (Dutch: 1626-1679). _See 856._


2561. VIEW NEAR HAARLEM.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See 627._

A beautiful example of the master, who has signed it in full in the
centre of the foreground. It will be noticed that the point of view is
much the same, and that the effect of sunlight in the middle distance
is the same, as in the large picture, No. 990. One may ask the question
which Fromentin puts of a like instance: "The two landscapes are,
the one on a large scale, the other on a small, a repetition of the
same subject. Is the little canvas the study which served as text for
the large? Did Ruysdael design, or did he paint from nature? Was he
inspired, or did he copy directly? That is his secret. In any case the
two works are charming."


2562. COUNTRY SCENE, WITH RUINED CASTLE.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See 627._

This is one of the best known of Ruysdael's small pictures, much prized
for its luminous quality: its pedigree has been traced through famous
collections for over 100 years. In the Bredel sale (1875) it fetched
£2310; in the Dudley sale (1892), £1470. It is No. 786 in vol. iv.
(1912) of Smith's _Catalogue Raisonné_.


2563. THE ENTRANCE TO THE FOREST.


2564. A COTTAGE ON A ROCKY HILL.


2565. COTTAGE AND HAYSTACK.


2566. SKIRTS OF A FOREST.


2567. A STORMY SEA-PIECE.

  _Ruysdael_ (Dutch: 1628-1682). _See 627._


2568. A LADY AT THE VIRGINALS.

  _Jan Vermeer_ (Dutch: 1632-1675). _See 1383._

No. 15 at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1900, where it was thus
described: "A lady seated on the right facing to left; she wears a
yellow skirt with blue overdress, the sleeves trimmed with lace, and
turns her face to the spectator as she plays. Her clavichord stands
upon a marble table and is open, showing a landscape painted inside the
cover; a viol da gamba and bow are in the left-hand bottom corner, and
a blue and yellow curtain above; a picture with three figures hangs on
the wall behind. Signed to the right of the lady's head, J V Meer."


2569. THREE BOORS DRINKING.

  _Adrian Brouwer_ (Dutch-Flemish: 1605-1638).

      Brouwer, Flemish by birth, Dutch by adoption, rivalled his
      contemporary, the younger Teniers, as a genre painter. His
      realism is as humorous as it is vigorous. His pictures, says
      M. Havard, "are marvels of arrangement and colouring. They
      are sober in conception, and exhibit exquisite modelling,
      remarkable softness, and light and shade full of transparency
      and truthfulness; qualities which, during his lifetime,
      obtained for Brouwer the admiration of his brother-artists
      and the enthusiasm of Rubens," who, as is known from extant
      documents, possessed several of his pictures. His portrait was
      painted by Van Dyck to be placed in a collection of the most
      celebrated portrait-painters.

      Brouwer led an exciting life, and has been the subject of
      several biographies, which have alternately covered him with
      scandal and whitewashed him. Documents unearthed during recent
      years support the earlier accounts, which represent this
      painter of topers as a jovial, reckless, dissipated Bohemian;
      though his epitaph may yet have partly told truth in describing
      him as "a man of great mind, who rejected every splendour of
      the world, and who despised gain and riches." The documents
      are set out by Wurzbach (_Niederländisches Künstler-Lexicon_,
      1906). Taking all the evidence together, we may picture Brouwer
      as a genial fellow, fond of adventure, slow in setting to
      work, quick in spending, inclined to libertinism and drink,
      constantly running into debt, a sworn foe of shams and parade,
      fond of his joke, a lover of poetry, and popular among all who
      knew him. One of the stories told of him well illustrates
      his mocking contempt of fashionable vanities. At Amsterdam
      he had bought himself some coarse linen, which he had made
      up into a fashionable suit and then painted with a flowered
      pattern. Brouwer's costume became the talk of the town, and
      shops were ransacked to furnish copies of it; till one night
      at the theatre, the artist jumped on to the stage, wiped off
      his pattern with a wet cloth, and laughed at his audience.
      He was born at Oudenarde, ran away from home, had exciting
      adventures on the way, and turned up in Amsterdam and Haarlem.
      He is said to have entered the studio of Frans Hals, and to
      have been very badly treated there. He is known to have been an
      artist of repute, moving also in literary circles, in Amsterdam
      and Haarlem, 1625-27. He is next heard of at Antwerp, where
      in 1631-32 he was admitted into the Painters' Guild. Three
      years later he became a member of the section of the Guild
      for exercising rhetoric. He was cast into the state prison,
      probably on suspicion of espionage; and during the seven months
      of his incarceration, succeeded in running up new debts to
      the extent of £400--a feat which may be explained by the fact
      that the prison amenities included an excellent wine-tavern.
      He died--of his dissipations, according to some, but quite
      as probably of the plague--and was buried in the cemetery,
      and afterwards in the Convent Church of the Carmelites. His
      pictures are rare. The Wallace Collection, the Victoria and
      Albert Museum (Ionides Collection), and the Dulwich Gallery
      have each one good example. It has been suggested that the
      Landscape, No. 72 in our Gallery, hitherto attributed to
      Rembrandt, is by Brouwer.


2570, 2571. WOODY LANDSCAPES.

  _Hobbema_ (Dutch: 1638-1709). _See 685._


2572. THE LITTLE FARM.

  _Adrian van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1636-1672). _See 867._

No. 57 in the Exhibition of Dutch Masters at the Burlington Fine Arts
Club, 1900, when it was thus described: "In the centre, among sparse
trees in leaf, stands a small farm; to left a man accompanied by a
woman on horseback, driving a flock of sheep to pasture; in the left
foreground a pool of water, with a cow drinking; in the centre, two
herdsmen, with cows, sheep, and goats lying down and feeding. Cool
daylight with light clouds spreading over blue sky." Signed in the
centre "A. v. Velde 1663."


2573. SEA-SCAPE: WINDY DAY.


2574. CALM: SHIPPING.

  _Willem van de Velde_ (Dutch: 1633-1707). _See 149._


2575. A MUSICAL PARTY.

  _Anthonie Palamedes_ (Dutch: 1601-1673).

      Palamedes was the son of a gem-engraver at Delft. He became
      Dean of the Painters' Guild. He painted portraits and small
      "conversation pieces," and sometimes supplied figures for the
      architectural pictures of his friend Dirk van Delen (see 1010).
      "The light and spirited pose of his figures, his bold touch,
      and the skill with which he makes the outline of his little
      groups stand out, please the eye" (Havard).


2576. A FAMILY GROUP.

  _Pieter Codde_ (Dutch: 1599-1678).

      A painter of Amsterdam much influenced by Frans Hals.


2577. A STIFF BREEZE.


2578. A WINDMILL BY A RIVER.


2579. SCENE ON THE ICE.


2580. RIVER SCENE.

  _Jan van Goyen_ (Dutch: 1596-1656). _See 137._


2681. A. VAN LEEUWENHOEK, F.R.S.

  _Nicolas Maes_ (Dutch: 1632-1693). _See 153._

A portrait of the eminent Dutch _savant_ (1632-1723) who has been
called "the father of scientific microscopy." He was elected a Fellow
of the Royal Society in 1680.


2582. FRUIT AND FLOWERS.

  _David de Heem_ (Dutch: 1570-1632).

      David de Heem, the elder, born at Utrecht, was the father of
      the more celebrated still-life painter of the same name. He and
      his son were the founders of the "still-life" school in their
      country.

Except for the snail, this brightly-coloured arrangement of oysters, a
lemon, a plum, cherries and nuts, with a glass of wine, is not unlike
the kind of arrangement of actual eatables and drinkables which one
may see to-day in the shop-windows of Italian restaurants in London.
Nor, in all probability, was the motive of the picture different. "The
painting of still-life in Holland," says M. Havard, "was originally
sign-painting. Inn-keepers and game-dealers had real pictures as signs,
painted upon their shop-fronts, and we know of several of these simple
masterpieces which have found their way into important collections"
(_The Dutch School_, p. 260).


2583. CATTLE IN A STORMY LANDSCAPE.

  _Paul Potter_ (Dutch: 1625-1654). _See 849._

Signed, and dated 1647; formerly in the collection of Mr. Hope, of
Deepdene.


2584. A LADY HOLDING A MIRROR.

  _Pieter Codde_ (Dutch: 1579-1678). _See 2576._


2585. ST. MARY MAGDALEN.

  _Adrian Ysenbrandt_ (Flemish: died 1551).

      Ysenbrandt was an assistant of Gerard David (see 1045). He
      came to Bruges, and was admitted into the Painters' Guild in
      1510; he worked there till his death. He acquired a reputation
      for skill in painting the nude and the human countenance;
      his carefulness of execution and the sweetness of expression
      which he gave to his faces were much admired. Many of his
      pictures were sent to Spain (see W. H. Weale in the _Burlington
      Magazine_, vol. ii.).

This picture of the Magdalen, before whom an angel holds a crucifix,
was in the Exhibition of the Primitives at Bruges in 1902. The artist's
careful execution may be noted in the beautifully illuminated MS.


2586. COAST SCENE.


2587. A CALM.


2588. A DUTCH GALLIOT.

  _Jan van de Cappelle_ (Dutch: painted 1650-1680). _See 865._


2589. THE YOUNG ASTROLOGER.

  _Frans van Mieris_ (Dutch: 1635-1681). _See 840._


2590. A WOMAN AT A WINDOW.


2591. THE FORGE.

  _Gabriel Metsu_ (Dutch: 1630-1667). _See 838._


2592. FRUIT PIECE.

  _W. K. Heda_ (Dutch: 1594-1678). _See 1469._


2593. PORTRAIT OF A MAN.

  _Petrus Cristus_ (Flemish: about 1410-1472).

      Cristus was born at Baerle, near Ghent. He purchased the right
      of citizenship at Bruges in 1444--that is, four years after the
      death of Jan van Eyck. He cannot therefore have been a pupil
      of that master, as has often been surmised; but he belongs to
      the school of the Van Eycks "by his realistic style, by the
      extreme care he bestowed on details, by his bold and powerful
      colouring, and by the tasteful arrangement of his draperies
      and interiors. But his works can never be mistaken for those
      of Van Eyck; his outline is often harsh, his types are wanting
      in character; his figures, designed and executed with very
      inferior skill, are not painted in the same impressive manner
      as those of the great master" (Wauters). The portrait of a
      Venetian consul (No. 696) is ascribed to him.

Acquired by Mr. Salting from the Earl of Northbrook's collection;
No. 10 at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1892--remarkable for the
preciseness and microscopic minuteness of hand displayed in it. The
portrait of a devout and studious young man. He holds an open book;
and on the wall of his chamber there is hung a board on which an
illuminated sheet of vellum, edged with a narrow red riband, has been
nailed. The miniature at the top of it represents the _Vernacle_ (our
Lord's head with cruciform nimbus and rays); and below is a rhymed
prayer, headed _Incipit oratio ad sanctam Veronicam_, and continuing
"Salve sancta facies Nostri redemptoris," etc.


2594. THE DUKE OF CLEVES.

  _Hans Memlinc_ (Early Flemish: 1430-1494). _See 686._


2595. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Dierick Bouts_ (Early Flemish: about 1410-1475).

      Dirk Bouts, Thieiri Bouts, Dierick of Haarlem, or Thieiri
      Stuerbout (by all of which names he has been called) was Dutch
      by birth, being born at Haarlem. At some unknown date he
      migrated to Flanders, and established himself at Louvain, where
      he was appointed Painter to the Town. In 1468 he delivered
      to the Council two beautiful pictures (now in the Museum of
      Brussels) representing "The Judgment of the Emperor Otho." His
      colouring, says M. Havard, "is clear and brilliant. Red and
      green assume under his brush the brilliancy of the ruby and the
      emerald. His draperies are of unusual softness, and have none
      of that stiffness of fold which is peculiar to Jan van Eyck and
      some of his pupils. His flesh tints are of a warm and vivid
      tone, and his shadows are remarkably transparent. But his merit
      is manifested especially in his picturesque and original manner
      of arranging his compositions. He is besides remarkable for the
      care and distinctness with which he treats the landscapes in
      the background of his pictures." Little is known of his life,
      and the ascription of various works to him is conjectural. To
      him, in the latest revision of labels in our Gallery, are now
      attributed Nos. 664, 774, and 943.


2596. ST. JEROME.

  _Gerard David_ (Early Flemish: 1460-1523). _See 1045._


2597. THREE VENETIAN GENTLEMEN AND A CHILD.

  _Johannes Stephen Calcar_ (Venetian: 1499-1546).

      "In the year 1545 I became known to," says Vasari, "and
      contracted much friendship with Giovanni Calcar, a Flemish
      painter of great merit, who so successfully practised the
      Italian manner that his works were not always perceived to be
      those of a Fleming; but he died at Naples while still young,
      and when the fairest hopes had been conceived respecting his
      future progress." He worked first at Dordrecht; but in 1536
      went to Venice, where he entered Titian's studio. He became a
      good master, says Vasari elsewhere, "whether for large or small
      figures, and in portraits was most admirable. By his hand--and
      they must do him honour to all time--were the designs for
      anatomical studies which the most admirable Andrea Vessalio
      caused to be engraved on copper and published with his works"
      (vol. v. p. 403).


2598. DIANA AND ENDYMION.

  _Rubens_ (Flemish: 1577-1640). _See 38._

A sketch painted about 1636.


2599. A VISIT TO THE DOCTOR.


2600. CARD PLAYERS.


2601. AN OLD WOMAN READING.

  _David Teniers_ (Flemish: 1610-1694). _See 154._


2602. A MAN WITH A RING.

  _Unknown_ (Flemish: 16th Century).


2603. VIRGIN AND CHILD.

  _Unknown_ (School of Cologne: early 16th Century).

By the master of the "Death of the Virgin" (a picture in the Munich
Gallery), a painter of Cologne, the teacher, it is said, of Bruyn. The
donor of the picture, with spectacles and a large straw hat, stands
at a desk, reading. (The curious in such matters may consult _Notes
and Queries_, 1890, for other early instances of spectacles in art.)
The picture was No. 48 (Plate 23) in the Burlington Fine Art Club's
Exhibition of Early Netherlandish Pictures, 1892.


2604. PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.

  _Christopher Amberger_ (German: 1490-1563).

      This painter, who worked at Augsburg, probably studied under
      Hans Burgkmair, and the painting of Hans Holbein the younger
      had an evident effect on his style, so much so that his works
      have been sometimes mistaken for those of Holbein. In 1532 he
      painted the portrait of Charles V.; and Sandrart tells us that
      this portrait was considered by the Emperor equal to any of the
      pictures painted of him by Titian. He certainly honoured the
      artist by giving him a gold chain and medal on the occasion
      (Bryan's _Dictionary of Painters_).


2605. DR. FUCHSIUS.

  _Bartolomaus Bruyn_ (School of Cologne: died 1556).

      This artist painted both religious subjects and portraits.
      His earlier works in the former kind recall the style of "The
      Master of the 'Death of the Virgin'" (see above, 2603). Bruyn
      was the last really eminent painter of the Cologne School. He
      was a municipal councillor of that town in 1550 and 1553.

A portrait of the celebrated German physician, Leonhard Fuchs
(1501-1566), one of the fathers of scientific botany. He has obtained,
says Hallam, a verdant immortality in the familiar flower which bears
his name, the fuchsia. He espoused the doctrines of the Reformation; in
our portrait he holds a paper inscribed (in German) "The word of the
Lord endureth for ever."


2606. THE MADONNA ENTHRONED.

  _Unknown_ (Flemish: 16th Century).

In the centre of the triptych, the Virgin sits on a throne of Flemish
renaissance design. On the right, St. Ambrose; on the left, St. Louis
of Toulouse. The royal rank of the latter Saint (nephew of St. Louis,
King of France, and son of Charles of Anjou, King of Naples), who
renounced his succession and became Bishop of Toulouse, is commonly
indicated as here, by fleur-de-lys upon a blue ground.


2607. A MAN WITH A MEDALLION.

  _Unknown_ (Flemish: 15-16th Century).


2608. VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ANGELS.

  _Robert Campin_ (Early Flemish: died 1444).

      Campin, a native of Hainault, settled at Tournai in about
      the year 1406, and quickly made a reputation, becoming
      painter-in-ordinary to the town. Between 1423 and 1428 there
      are records showing that he filled several offices in the
      Painters' Guild and amassed a considerable fortune. He had
      several apprentices; among them, Roger Van der Weyden (see
      711), who was with him from 1426 to 1432. He made many designs
      for tapestry and seems to have been charged with the designing
      of all municipal art work in whatever kind (W. H. Weale, in the
      _Burlington Magazine_, vol. xi.).


2609. VIRGIN AND CHILD IN AN APARTMENT.

  _Campin_ (Early Flemish: died 1444).

The Virgin is of the same unlovely type as in the picture ascribed to
Bouts, No. 2595. Behind her head is a screen of plaited straw.


2610. ANTOINE DE BOURBON.

  _Corneille de Lyons_ (French: 16th Century).

      Two painters are catalogued under this name, father and son,
      who are sometimes distinguished as "Corneille le Grand" and
      "Corneille le Petit." The elder was a Flemish painter, who
      became naturalised in France in 1547. In 1540 he was appointed
      Painter to the Dauphin; in 1551, Painter to the King. He is
      mentioned in a poem of 1544, and in a deed of 1564. Several
      portraits in the Museum of Versailles and at Chantilly are
      ascribed to him. (See Henri Bouchot's _Les Clouet et Corneille
      de Lyon_.)


2611. A MAN IN BLACK.

  _Corneille de Lyons_ (French: 16th Century).


2612. LOUIS XI., KING OF FRANCE, 1423-1483.


2613. PHILIP AND MARGARET OF BURGUNDY.

  _Unknown_ (French: 15th Century).

These pictures are of the early Burgundian School.


2614. A LADY AS MARY MAGDALEN.

  _Unknown_ (French School: 15th Century).

Notice the pearl embroidery.


2615. MARY, QUEEN OF FRANCE.

  _Unknown_ (French School: 15th Century).

Formerly supposed to represent Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII., born
in 1498.


2616. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.


2617. THE DUCHESS D'ANGOULÊME.

  _Unknown_ (French School: 15th Century).


2618. VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ANGELS.

  _Unknown_ (French School: 15th Century).

Possibly by an artist of the Catalonian school.


2619. LANDSCAPE.

  _Nicolas Poussin_ (French: 1593-1665). _See 39._


2620. THE HAPPY MOTHER.

  _Jean Honoré Fragonard_ (French: 1732-1806).

      The only poets who seized the spirit of the France of the
      eighteenth century were, said the brothers Goncourt, two
      painters: Watteau and Fragonard. It was Fragonard, says Sir
      Claude Phillips, "whose frank passion, whose irresistible
      _élan_ lighted up the decline of the century much as the
      imaginativeness of Watteau, his reticence and wistful charm
      even in the midst of voluptuousness, lighted up its first
      years. He is the Ovid of French painting." He was born at
      Grasse near Cannes; and the pupil, in Paris, first of Chardin
      and then of Boucher (see 1258, 1090). Having won the Prix de
      Rome in 1752, he travelled in Italy, drawing all the sights and
      monuments, and studying the old masters. The works of Tiepolo
      (see 1192) especially attracted him, and something of their
      brilliant, flashing _bravura_ was to be characteristic of
      Fragonard himself. Soon after his return to Paris, a picture
      of "Coresus and Callirhoë" made a sensation in the Salon, and
      inspired what Lord Morley calls "an elaborate but not very
      felicitous criticism" by Diderot. Fragonard did not return,
      however, to compositions in the classical style; he found
      his _métier_, and a highly lucrative practice, in pictures
      of sentimental _genre_, audaciously amorous in subject, and
      of masterly grace and lightness in execution. Some of his
      most famous works in this sort are to be seen in the Wallace
      Collection. The beautifully decorative canvases, the "Roman
      d'Amour de la Jeunesse," which were exhibited in London in
      1898 and are now in Mr. Pierpont Morgan's collection, were a
      commission from Madame du Barry, who, however, for reasons
      which have not been clearly explained, declined them. From
      Mademoiselle Guimard, the dancer, and queen of the _monde
      galant_, Fragonard had received a like commission; and the
      story is well known of the revenge taken by the painter when
      he threw up the task, and transformed his portrait of the lady
      as Terpsichore into Tisiphone. In 1794 Fragonard retired for
      security from the Terror to Grasse, and on his return to Paris
      he found his vogue gone. The Revolution had killed the taste
      for his amorous trifles. The reign of the Classical School of
      David had begun; and Fragonard died in comparative oblivion and
      poverty.

In 1769 Fragonard had married Marie Anne Gérard, the miniature painter;
and to the succeeding years belong, says his biographer (the Baron de
Portalis), many pictures of which the theme is the cradle. Our picture
is of that kind.


2621. WILLOWS.

  _Charles François Daubigny_ (French: 1817-1878).

      Daubigny was the youngest member of the "Barbizon" group;
      and, though he has artistic affinity with them, and regarded
      Corot as his master, he painted not in their chosen district,
      but on the banks of the Oise. His landscapes have not the
      poetry of Corot's, nor the force of Rousseau's; but they
      are more comfortable, as it were, and human. Corot's world
      might be inhabited by dryads; in Rousseau's landscapes man
      is subordinate or overpowered; Daubigny paints nature as the
      pleasant abode of human beings fond of the country--commons
      not too remote from a garden wall, the banks of pleasant
      streams where men may boat or fish. The country with him is
      full of fresh air. "There is a story told of a poor young
      man, afflicted with consumption, who coming suddenly before a
      work of Daubigny, exclaimed, 'Ah, I can breathe better now'"
      (Thomson's _Barbizon School_, p. 283).

      Daubigny's life is in accord with what have been suggested
      above as characteristic notes of his art. He had no privations,
      storms, or struggles. He was born at Paris, in an artistic
      family; and as a youth assisted his father in painting boxes,
      clock-cases and the like. He was a delicate child, and had
      lived much with his nurse Bazot at Valmondois on the Oise,
      where too he afterwards spent many holidays and where in later
      years he made his home. At the age of 18 he went to Italy,
      where the pictures of Claude especially attracted him. On his
      return he was engaged for a time as a picture-restorer. He
      studied with Paul Delaroche, but struck out a line for himself
      in landscape pictures and etchings, and his works gradually
      found favour. He had a boat made for voyaging on the Oise and
      Seine, and this served as a floating studio. He built himself a
      house at Auvers on the Oise, which was decorated with paintings
      by Corot and other artist-friends. In 1866 he was invited by
      Leighton and others to visit England, and he exhibited at the
      Academy. In 1859 he had been made a Chevalier of the Legion of
      Honour, and in 1874 he was promoted to the grade of Officer.
      On his death-bed he said to those about him "Adieu; I am going
      to see above if friend Corot has found me any _motifs_ for
      landscapes."

Sunset effect on a lake; with brilliant colours piercing through the
trees to the water. Signed, and dated 1874.


2622. THE BANKS OF A RIVER.

  _Daubigny_ (French: 1817-1878). _See 2621._

An earlier picture (signed, and dated 1859). The small house-boat or
barge in the foreground may be the painter's floating studio, mentioned
above.


2623. ALDERS.


2624. THE GARDEN WALL.

  _Daubigny_ (French: 1817-1878). _See 2621._


2625. THE BENT TREE.

  _J. B. C. Corot_ (French: 1796-1875). _See 2135._

This beautiful picture was formerly in the collection of the late Mr.
Alexander Young, one of the earliest purchasers of Corots in England,
and was generally considered the gem of his collection of works by
that master. The writer of an account of the Young Collection calls
attention, in describing this picture, to "the wonderful gradation of
tones in the trees and foreground, the subtle beauty of the distant
view, the massing and treatment of the trees against the luminous sky,
the dignified restraint of the colour scheme" (_Studio_, vol. 39).


2626. THE WOOD GATHERER.

  _Corot_ (French: 1796-1875). _See 2135._

Also from the Young Collection.


2627. EVENING ON THE LAKE.

  _Corot_ (French: 1796-1875). _See 2135._

Formerly in the collection of Lord Leighton. That Corot liked the
effect of trees stretching out a graceful arm across the water may be
seen by comparing this picture with No. 2625.


2628. NOON.


2629. A FLOOD.

  _Corot_ (French: 1796-1875). _See 2135._


2630. COWS STANDING IN A MARSH.

  _Corot_ (French: 1796-1875). _See 2135._

How simple are the ingredients out of which Corot makes a picture! A
marsh, two cows with a herdsman, and four willows; but all are suffused
in a beautiful haze, and wrought into an exquisite harmony of tone and
colour. Like all Corot's pictures, this should be seen from some little
distance; the more it is observed, the more will its charm be felt.


2631. THE FISHERMAN'S HUT.

  _Corot_ (French: 1796-1875). _See 2135._

An exquisite harmony in tender green and pink.


2632. THE STORM.


2633. COMMON WITH STORMY SUNSET.

  _Diaz_ (French: 1809-1876). _See 2058._


2634. RIVER SCENE.

  _Jules Dupré_ (French: 1812-1889).

      Dupré, the last of the romantic school of French landscape, the
      friend and the survivor by many years of Millet and Rousseau,
      was born at Nantes. He began by painting on china, in the
      studio at Sèvres of his uncle, Arsène Gillet, to whom also Diaz
      was at one time apprenticed. At the age of 22 he was already
      exhibiting at the Salon; and unlike other members of the group,
      he was well treated by the artistic powers of the day. During a
      visit to England he became acquainted with Constable. He lived
      at Isle-Adam near Paris.


2635. SUNSET AT AUVERGNE.

  _Théodore Rousseau_ (French: 1812-1867). _See 2439._


2636. THE WHISPER.

  _Jean François Millet_ (French: 1814-1875).

      Millet, the peasant painter of France, occupies an important
      place in the history of modern art. He heard, as he said, _le
      cri de la terre_; and it is this to which he gave expression
      in painting. Gambetta well described the characteristics
      of Millet and his great contemporary. Rousseau (see 2439)
      "revealed the forest; Millet was the painter of the seasons,
      the fields, and the peasants." Rousseau and others of the
      school were painters of the country, of work-a-day nature;
      Millet painted the country-labourers. He did not idealise them,
      but he showed, with deep poetry, the dignity of their labour.
      This is the spirit of the great pictures--"The Sower," "The
      Gleaners," "The Angelus," by which through engravings and other
      reproductions he is most widely known. The depth of impression
      which those works are found to make was the result of intense
      feeling and infinite pains on the part of the artist. "The
      Angelus" hung on the point of finish for many months. "I mean,"
      he said, "I mean the bells to be heard sounding, and only
      natural truth of expression can produce the effect." When a
      visitor wanted to buy "The Sheepfold," Millet would not let it
      go. "It is not complete," he said; "you cannot hear the dog
      bark in there yet." The life and character of Millet were in
      accord with his work. He was born of peasant ancestry, and the
      boy grew up, as Mr. Henley says, "in an environment of toil,
      sincerity, and devoutness. He was fostered upon the Bible and
      the great book of nature." "Wake up, my little François," was
      his grandmother's morning salutation, "the birds have long
      been singing the glory of God." He learned Latin from the
      parish priest, and he soon became a student of Virgil. He
      followed his father out into the fields, and thenceforward,
      as became the eldest boy in a large family, worked hard at
      grafting and ploughing, sowing and reaping, scything and
      sheaving and planting, and all the many duties of husbandmen.
      The life he painted was the life he knew and had led. The
      spirit in which he painted it was that of his own reverent, and
      somewhat melancholy, temperament. In 1849 he moved from Paris
      to Barbizon, on the borders of the Forest of Fontainebleau,
      which henceforward was his home. "If you could but see," he
      wrote, "how beautiful the forest is! It is so calm, with such
      a terrible grandeur, that I feel myself really afraid in it."
      "The most joyful thing I know," he wrote in a letter of 1851,
      "is the peace, the silence that one enjoys in the woods or in
      the tilled lands. One sees a poor, heavily laden creature with
      a bundle of faggots advancing from a narrow path in the fields.
      The manner in which this figure comes suddenly before one is a
      momentary reminder of the fundamental condition of human life
      and toil. On the tilled land around, one watches figures hoeing
      and digging. One sees how this or that one rises and wipes away
      the sweat with the back of his hand. 'In the sweat of thy face
      shalt thou eat bread.' Is that merry, enlivening work, as some
      people would like to persuade us? And yet it is here that I
      find the true humanity, the great poetry."

      Like most innovators, Millet had to create the taste by which
      he was to be admired; and, though the tale of his struggles and
      poverty is sometimes exaggerated, he had many discouragements
      and times of difficulty. He was neither "classical" nor
      "romantic," and both of those schools of art looked askance at
      him. He was born at Gruchy, near Cherbourg; and till the age of
      18 lived the life of a peasant. As there were then other sons
      to help on the farm, his father, who had long noticed the lad's
      artistic talent, took him to Cherbourg, where he received some
      instruction under Mouchel and Langlois successively, and where
      the Town Council gave him assistance in pursuing his studies.
      The death of his father recalled him for a while to the farm;
      but in 1837, at the age of 23, he went to Paris and entered the
      studio of Delaroche (see 1909). His studio-nickname was "The
      Man of the Woods." He tried to sell works in his own style, but
      found no market for them, and had to take instead to painting
      pastorals, etc., in the manner of Boucher and Watteau. He
      married in 1841; his wife died in 1844, and in 1845 he married
      again. For a time, he attained a certain vogue as a painter of
      the nude, and a classical picture of OEdipus in the Salon
      of 1847 attracted some attention. In 1849, as already said,
      he settled at Barbizon, and it is from 1850 onwards that his
      great works date. They did not sell, or they commanded very
      small prices. One was bought by his devoted friend, Rousseau;
      for "The Angelus" he received £100. Within 20 years of his
      death, it fetched £22,120 at public auction. But the reputation
      of Millet grew gradually in his lifetime, and in 1868 he was
      made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He is buried beside
      Rousseau at Chailly, near Barbizon.

This little "pastoral," in which a girl reclines on a rock, while a
naked child whispers in her ear, belongs to the painter's earlier
period.


2669. ST. CLEMENT AND DONOR.

  _Le Mâitre de Jean Perréal_ (French: 15th century).

      Attributed to the master of Jean Perréal (called Jean de Paris,
      who lived about 1463-1529); painter to Louis XII.

St. Clement, in cope and mitre (as Bishop of Rome), rests his right
hand on the shoulder of the Donor; and in his left hand carries an
anchor (the emblem referring to the legend of the Saint having been
cast into the sea bound to an anchor). Londoners are familiar with the
emblem, as it surmounts the steeple of St. Clement Danes in the Strand.


2670. LADY HOLDING A ROSARY.

  _Unknown_ (Flemish: 16th century).


2671. A PIETÀ.

  _Francia_ (Bolognese: 1450-1517). _See 179._


2672. A VENETIAN GENTLEMAN.

  _Alvise Vivarini_ (Venetian: painted 1461-1503). _See 1872._

This striking and powerful portrait is signed by the artist on the
parapet. It was formerly in the Bonomi-Cereda Collection at Milan (see
Berenson's _Lorenzo Lotto_, p. 107).


2673. NARCISSUS.

  _Beltraffio_ (Lombard: 1467-1516). _See 728._

This pretty little picture was shown at the Old Masters' Exhibition of
1870, where Ruskin noted it as an example of the phase in Italian art
in which "pictorial perfectness and deliciousness" were sought before
everything else (_Works_, xix. 444-5). "The same model reappears in the
profile portrait of a youth (also in the character of Narcissus) in the
Uffizi Gallery; again in a profile of San Sebastian in the Frizzoni
Collection at Bergamo; and again in a profile drawing in the Louvre"
(No. 47_a_ at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1898).


2709. MOTHER AND CHILD.


2710. THE DRAWBRIDGE.

  _Jacob Maris_ (Dutch: 1837-1899).

      Two small pictures by one of the principal masters of the
      modern Dutch School. Jacob Maris was born at The Hague. He
      studied in Paris under Hebert, and exhibited at the Salon from
      1862 to 1872, when he returned to The Hague. His figure-studies
      show, says R. A. M. S., "a perception of the rich but quiet
      tissue of colour which wraps all Nature if you look at it
      broadly enough." In landscape he and his brother Matthew are
      the chief of modern Dutch painters.


2711. WATERING HORSES.

  _Anton Mauve_ (Dutch: 1838-1888).

      Mauve, one of the favourite landscape-painters of the modern
      Dutch School, was born at Zaandam, the son of a Baptist
      minister. He studied art at Amsterdam; his pensive and peaceful
      landscapes, often combined with horses and other animals,
      rapidly became popular. "His colour," wrote W. E. Henley,
      "is quite his own. To a right sense of nature and a mastery
      of certain atmospheric effects, he unites a genuine strain
      of poetry. His treatment of animals is at once judicious and
      affectionate. He is careful to render them in relation to their
      aerial surroundings; but he has recognised that they too are
      creatures of character and sentiment, and he loves to paint
      them in their relations to each other and to man. The sentiment
      is never forced, the characterisation is never strained, the
      drama is never exorbitant; the proportions in which they
      are introduced are so nicely adjusted that the pictorial,
      the purely artistic qualities of the work are undiminished"
      (Edinburgh Exhibition Catalogue, 1886).

This picture is a good example of the luminous skies in which Mauve
excelled. The sky shines, it has been said, even on a dull day (see an
appreciation of Mauve by Frank Rutter in the _Studio_, vol. 42).


2712. THE INTERIOR OF HAARLEM CHURCH.

  _Johannes Bosboom_ (Dutch: 1817-1891).

      A characteristic piece by a painter of architecture who
      "rendered very delicately the play of sunbeams in the interior
      of picturesque churches, and warm effects of light in large
      halls and dusky corners" (Muther).


2713. THE PHILOSOPHER.

  _Joseph Israels_ (Dutch: 1824-1911).

      Joseph Israels, the head of the modern Dutch School and a
      painter of world-wide reputation, has been called "The Dutch
      Millet," and "a modern Rembrandt"; and the phrases serve to
      indicate his characteristics, and his place in the development
      of modern art. He essayed to do what Rembrandt had done
      triumphantly two centuries before: to paint "not accidents,
      but life itself." He made in Dutch art the same departure that
      Millet made in French: he turned from conventional themes and
      motives to the life around him. Like Millet, Israels made a
      false start in art. He went to Paris in 1845, entered the
      École des Beaux-Arts, showing "Achilles and Patroclus" as his
      probationary drawing, and on his return to Amsterdam in 1848
      began to paint, as Delaroche had taught him, "historical"
      scenes, Calabrian brigands, and other subjects in "the grand
      style." His health broke down, and he was ordered change of
      scene. At Zandvoort, a small fishing village near Haarlem,
      he found his Barbizon. "He lodged with a ship's carpenter,
      took part in all the usages of his house-mates, and began to
      perceive amid these new surroundings that the events of the
      present are capable of being painted, that the sorrows of the
      poor are as deep as the tragical fate of ancient heroes, that
      everyday life is as poetic as any historical subject, and that
      nothing suggests richer moods of feeling than the interior of a
      fishing-hut, bathed in tender light and harmonious in colour.
      This residence of several months in a distant little village
      led him to discover his calling, and determined his future
      career" (Muther). He was a devoted Jew, with a deep interest
      in the life and character of those of his race who abound in
      Holland. Among them, and among the Dutch toilers of the sea, he
      found his vocation, in painting the tragedy, the pathos, or the
      simple domestic joys of humble working folk. He did this with a
      technical mastery and with rare insight. His power of pathetic
      expression is remarkable; and over his work a spirit of soft
      tenderness is suffused. Many, perhaps most, of his pictures
      are sombre, but he had an eye for youth and hope, as well as
      age and sorrow, and few artists have painted children with so
      much sympathy. His method is broad and simple; his pictures
      having unity of effect, and telling their own story with great
      directness.

      Joseph Israels was born at Gröningen, in the north of Holland,
      and for a time was occupied in his father's business as a
      money-changer, but he was encouraged to draw. In 1844 he went
      to Amsterdam, and entered the studio of Jan Kruseman. Then, as
      already related, came his student-years in Paris, and his false
      start as an historical painter. In 1855 he was represented at
      the Paris Exhibition by an historical picture of the Prince
      of Orange. In 1857 he showed at the Salon "Children by the
      Sea" and "Evening on the Beach." This change of subject marks
      the true start in an artistic career which was continuously
      successful, and which was prolonged into extreme old age. In
      1862 his picture of "The Shipwrecked Mariner" (see below,
      2732) created a sensation at the International Exhibition in
      London. In 1863 he married and settled down in a house midway
      between The Hague and Scheveningen, facing the canal. "Here the
      boats with their loads of herrings pass slowly along, so that
      the painter has only to look out of the front windows of his
      house in order to see the very men and women, the boats and
      towing-ropes, that figure in his canvases. His work is done
      in a studio in his garden; here he has a glass house, in which
      he paints his open-air figures, and has likewise fitted up a
      corner of an old Dutch cottage, so that open-air scenes and
      interiors may be as lifelike as it is possible for an artist to
      render them. As you enter this studio, you perceive a little
      old gentleman at work, dressed in a brown velvet coat. His hair
      is silvery white, and his somewhat pale face is lit up with the
      kindliest of smiles. He speaks five or six languages in the
      pleasantest voice imaginable, and English is one of them."

      Personally, Israels was one of the most breezy of men, full of
      life and vigour, genial and accessible: "as fresh in mind as a
      youngster in his teens, as versatile as he is amiable, able and
      always ready to talk on every conceivable subject of interest,
      ever contributing some caustic and pointed comment, yet never
      assuming the dictatorial and self-opinionated manner which
      genius often considers itself privileged to adopt. His modesty,
      his unfailing amiability to all, young and old, distinguished
      and insignificant, have served to endear Joseph Israels to all
      who come in contact with him. He does not care to talk much
      about his own achievements, but he is less reticent about those
      of his son Isaac, who, he declares, is a greater artist than
      himself." These _personalia_ are quoted from notices which
      appeared in connection with the artist's 75th birthday (in
      the _Daily News_ and in _Israel_). He had still twelve years
      of life; and "his was the rare satisfaction of the man who,
      beginning in advance of his time, creates his own public, and
      sees it growing stronger, larger, and more devoted as he passes
      from youth to middle life and thence to extreme old age. He
      was not consciously the founder of a school, but he had many
      close followers, and the modern Dutch painters, who are now so
      fashionable, owe their fundamental ideas to him" (_Times_, Aug.
      15, 1911).

There are passages in Browning's _Grammarian's Funeral_ which will
suggest themselves to many readers as they study this picture of an
old student writing by the light of a single candle. The picture
may be compared with an earlier Dutch one of a like subject--"The
Philosopher," by Bega (1481).


2714. GRANDFATHER'S BIRTHDAY.

  _Isabey_ (French: 1804-1886).

      Eugène Gabriel Isabey (by whom there are several pictures in
      the Wallace Collection) was born in Paris, the son of the
      celebrated miniature-painter, Jean-Baptiste Isabey. He first
      appeared as a genre painter; and "amid the group of Classicists
      of his time, he had (says Dr. Muther) the effect of a beautiful
      patch of colour." He afterwards took to sea painting, having
      in 1830 accompanied the French expedition to Algiers as marine
      draughtsman.

A characteristic example of the elegant facility with which the painter
rendered scenes involving gay attire.


2715. FISH MARKET, DIEPPE.

  _Isabey_ (French: 1804-1886).


2723, 2724. LANDSCAPES.

  Ascribed to _G. Poussin_ (French: 1613-1675). _See_ 31.

These landscapes, only recently included in the official numbering of
the collection, were presented by Mr. P. Pusey in 1849.


2725. CHRIST BLESSING.

  _Benedetto Diana_ (Venetian: died 1525).

      "If Benedetto be the painter of the fine picture of 'Christ
      at Emmaus,' in the church of St. Salvatore, Venice, still
      attributed in the guidebooks to Giovanni Bellini, he must have
      been an artist of no ordinary merit, and one who gradually,
      from an unpromising commencement of his artistic career,
      attained a high place among the followers of the master. A
      half-length figure, larger than life, of the Saviour in the
      act of blessing, signed with the painter's name, in private
      possession at Venice, although in a very damaged condition, has
      a grand and impressive character not unworthy of Bellini, to
      whom, as to other Venetian masters of note, many works by Diana
      in sundry collections are ascribed. He was employed with the
      two Bellini and Alvise Vivarini in decorating the hall of the
      Ducal Palace" (Layard's ed. of Kugler, 1887, p. 333).


2727. LE PONT DE LA TOURNELLE, PARIS.

  _Stanislas Lapine_ (French: 1836-1892).

      Born at Caen; studied under Corot; exhibited at the Salon from
      1859.

The Church of Notre Dame in the middle distance.


2731. LANDSCAPE.

  _W. Buitenweg_ (Dutch: 1590-1630).

      William Buitenweg, or Buytewech, best known for his landscape
      drawings, was born at Rotterdam; married at Haarlem in 1613,
      and in 1625 returned to Rotterdam.


2732. THE SHIPWRECKED MARINER.

  _Joseph Israels_ (Dutch: 1824-1911). _See 2713._

This celebrated picture--one by which the master often said he would
like to be judged--created a great sensation at the International
Exhibition of 1862. It was, said one critic, the most moving picture in
the exhibition; before it, said another, crowds daily linger. The storm
has passed, the waves have subsided, the greyish-black thunderclouds
have vanished, and greenish, pallid sky smiles upon the earth once
more. But upon the waves a shattered boat still rocks, and men and
women and children have come down to see what victim may have been
cast up by the tide--"For men must work, and women must weep, Though
storms be sudden, and waters deep, And the harbour bar be moaning."
Two fishermen reverently bear home the body of their dead comrade. His
disconsolate wife and two awestruck children walk in front, and his
old mother beside him. A man with a boat-hook, a woman pointing to the
wreck on the reef, and others follow the procession, in the rear of
which is the pathetic figure of a dog.


2757. TARTARUS: A SATIRICAL DESIGN.

  _James Callot_ (French: 1593-1635).

      "A curious and fantastic composition (in Indian ink), by a
      celebrated engraver and draughtsman, in which it would seem
      that the artist intended to satirise the ecclesiastic factions
      rife in France during the minority of Louis XIII. Under the
      vault of a huge cave, round the upper part of which evil
      spirits and harpies are sporting, several figures are grouped.
      In the centre of the foreground two Jesuits are derided by
      demons. On the right, Cerberus, chained to a rock, guards the
      entrance to Hell, while an armed warrior (Louis XIII.) stands
      near with his back to the spectator. On the left is Death,
      surrounded by his victims and the Vices. In the middle distance
      Charon is crossing the Styx with his boat full of passengers,
      whom a crowd on the shore vainly endeavour to join. Beyond are
      represented the tortures of the condemned, among whom Ixion,
      Tityus, the Danaides, and other mythological personages are
      conspicuous. The armorial bearings introduced on the lower
      edge of the drawing are supposed to be those of M. de Boyer of
      Baudot, who is said to have suggested the design" (_Director's
      Report_, 1884). The artist's independence of character is
      recorded in a familiar anecdote. He was witness to the siege
      and capitulation of his native town, Nancy, in 1633, and the
      French king called on him to engrave a plate commemorative of
      the occurrence. When he declined, some of the courtiers are
      said to have remarked to the artist that there were means to
      make him comply. He replied that he would sooner cut off his
      right hand than employ it in such a work; a speech which, being
      reported to the king, led him to say that the Dukes of Lorraine
      were fortunate in the possession of such subjects.


2758. A SQUALL FROM THE WEST.

  _Louis Eugène Boudin_ (French: 1825-1898). _See 2078._


2759. STORMY LANDSCAPE.

  _George Michel_ (French: 1763-1843). _See 2258._


2764. A FAMILY GROUP.

  Ascribed to _Jan Vermeer_ (Dutch: 1632-1675).

This picture once formed part of No. 1699; the right arm of the seated
child and the tablecloth here are continued there.


2767. THE SEA.

  _Gustave Courbet_ (French: 1819-1877).

      Courbet is famous in the history of modern French painting as
      the first of the "realists"; he is the Caravaggio of France,
      full of force and vigour, but often somewhat coarse and brutal.
      His landscapes and seapieces will probably be esteemed more
      highly by posterity than his realistic works. He was, says Dr.
      Muther, "the first French painter of sea-pieces, who had a
      feeling for the sombre majesty of the sea. His very quietude
      is expressive of majesty; his peace is imposing, his smile
      grave; and his caress is not without a menace." Courbet was
      a revolutionary in politics, as in art. In September 1870 he
      was appointed Director of the Fine Arts by the Provisional
      Government, and he afterwards joined the Commune. He was
      instrumental in saving many works of art, but he ordered the
      destruction of the Column in the Place Vendôme. For this he was
      brought before a court-martial and sentenced to six months'
      imprisonment. Afterwards, in a civil action, he was cast in
      heavy damages; his furniture and pictures were sold; and he
      retired to Switzerland. He died at La Tour, Vevay, a ruined
      man.


2790. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

  _Mabuse_ (Flemish: about 1470-1541). _See 656._

This famous picture was acquired for the National Gallery from
Rosalind, Countess of Carlisle, in 1911, for £42,776.[262] The picture
was painted in about the year 1500 for the Abbey of Grammont in East
Flanders. In 1600 it was bought for 2000 florins by the Archduke
Albert to decorate the high altar of the Court Chapel in Brussels. A
story which is recorded of it in those days is a tribute to its bright
attractiveness. During Lent it used to be concealed by the hanging in
front of it of a picture of the Crucifixion as less likely to interfere
with the penitential thoughts proper to the season. In the 18th century
the picture passed into the collection of Prince Charles of Lorraine,
Governor-General of the Netherlands, and thence into that of the
fifth Earl of Carlisle. For more than a century it remained at Castle
Howard, and many connoisseurs who saw it there wrote of it as one of
the chief art-treasures of Great Britain. "I do not think," wrote W.
Bürger (Thoré), "that there is anywhere else a picture by Mabuse so
brilliant, so well preserved, so _capital_ as the Adoration of the
Kings, belonging to the Earl of Carlisle." "For variety of character,
glow of colour, and finished execution, quite unsurpassed," said Mrs.
Jameson of it.

The pride of the artist himself in his work is shown by the fact that
he has signed his name upon it in two places--_i.e._ on the head-dress
of Balthasar, the black king, and on the metal collar of his attendant.
The signature Jennin Gossart (diminutive, Little John), was that under
which Mabuse was inscribed as a member of the Guild of St. Luke at
Antwerp. In the history of Flemish art the picture is of interest as
one of the last works painted before the "Italianising" influence
became marked. It is one of the finest specimens of Mabuse's first
period (see under 656); but it will be noticed that the architecture of
the ruin is no longer Gothic, but already shows the influence of the
Renaissance. The picture is after 400 years in perfect preservation.
It has an artistic unity, for the parts are subordinated to the
whole; but it is full of incident, which adds not a little to its
attractiveness and curious interest.

The Adoration of the Magi affords a remarkable instance of the way
in which the Bible text, first expounded by Church legends, was then
embroidered by the painters; and this example of "evolution in art"
may be studied very fully in the National Gallery, which contains
pictures of the subject painted in various schools and at various
periods. The starting-point of the whole development is the second
chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel where it is related that "wise men came
from the East to Jerusalem"; that a star guided them to Bethlehem; and
that "when they were come into the house, they saw the young child
with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshipped him; and when they
had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts--gold, and
frankincense, and myrrh." Legend set itself to work on this narrative.
The Wise Men, it was decided, were three in number; and the Psalmist's
prediction--"the Kings of Tarshish and of the Isles shall bring
presents, the Kings of Sheba and Saba shall offer gifts"--showed that
the Magi were kings. Later writers identified their realms as Tarsus,
Saba, and Nubia; whence one of the kings is commonly represented as a
Moor or Nubian. Their names also became known--Gaspar, Melchior, and
Balthasar. Further developments of the legend--how their remains were
discovered by the Empress Helena at Constantinople, and taken by Milan
to Cologne--do not here concern us; it will be seen that by the time
art was ready to take up the story, the painters had much material
around which to let their fancy play.

The earlier painters in each school treated the story simply. Then as
technical resources increased, and artistic effect rather than mere
religious instruction became the motive, the theme was ever more and
more expanded, until it became the most gorgeously rendered of all
the Gospel scenes. Many readers will remember the severe and simple
treatment of the subject by Giotto in the Arena Chapel at Padua;
with which may be compared in our gallery Orcagna's small picture
(574). If the visitor after looking at that will turn to the splendid
pageant (1033), with its seventy figures, by Botticelli (or Filippino
Lippi), he will see at a glance how the theme became embroidered and
enlarged. The picture by Fra Angelico (582) represents an intermediate
stage. A similar contrast may be noted in the Flemish room. The
picture attributed to David (1079) is simple, earnest, and homely;
far less gorgeous and various than the Mabuse. The fact is that, in
the more elaborate pictures of the subject, it was taken as an excuse
or occasion for displaying whatever elements of pomp or circumstance
appealed to the individual artist. Thus Peruzzi (167 and 218)
elaborates the architecture and the horses, and introduces portraits.
The Tuscans made out of the subject a Florentine pageant. Mabuse's
picture is interesting, amongst other reasons, as a kind of epitome
of the arts and crafts of his time. Note, for instance, the cups and
chalices in which the kings bring their presents; their jewelled robes
and head-dresses; and, for a minor detail, the pretty bag worn by the
Black King's page: it might well be copied for a lady's reticule to-day.

No less remarkable than the variety of treatment in pictures of the
Magi is the large measure of uniformity of type which may be found
in them all. A few remarks on these common elements, which were for
the most part symbolic, will serve the double purpose of directing
attention to further details in Mabuse's picture and of connecting it
with other examples in the Gallery. The _scene_ of the drama is in
the earliest pictures a stable or a shed; in the later, it is almost
invariably the ruins of a temple or other ancient building--a symbol of
the triumph of Christianity over paganism. The ox and the ass will be
noticed among the ruins here, and the shepherds are seen approaching.
The idea is to mark the event as a manifestation alike to the Jews
(the shepherds) and to the Gentiles (the Magi). Angels hover above,
singing the "Gloria in Excelsis," and the composition is crowned by
the Star with the Dove. The _background_ almost invariably includes a
mountainous landscape, through which the retinue of the kings may be
discerned winding its way--a reminder that they journeyed from a far
country. This is a feature, indicated sufficiently by Mabuse, which
may be seen more emphasised in the picture by Foppa (729). The _Kings_
are nearly always shown as old, middle-aged, and young respectively,
and one of them is black: when the Gentiles were called to salvation,
all ages, continents, and races were included. In Mabuse's picture the
equality of the races is emphasised in a further way; the Black King,
conspicuous on the left, has his train borne by a white page. The
eldest of the kings offers a vase of gold, out of which Christ has
taken a piece, which He holds in His hand. The king uncovers his head.
"To most mediæval painters the Adoration envisages itself essentially
as an act of feudal homage." Conspicuous in the foreground are two
_dogs_. "The one on the right," says the Official Catalogue, "is
similar to a dog by Albert Dürer in his engraving of St. Eustace, that
on the left is reversed from a print by Martin Schongauer." The dog is
often thus included in the "Adoration"; as, for instance, in one of
the earliest (Orcagna, 574) and in one of the latest (Peruzzi, 218) of
our versions; and everybody will have noticed how frequently in other
religious pictures also the dog is introduced. "This custom of putting
either the dog, or some inferior animal, to be either in contrast, or
modest companionship, with the nobleness of human form and thought,
is," says Ruskin, "a piece of what may be called mental comparative
anatomy, which has its beginning very far back in art" (_Eagle's
Nest_, ch. 8; see also _Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. chs. 3, 6).
The place of _Joseph_ in the scene differs a good deal in different
pictures, for the early legends varied. Orcagna (574) shows him
receiving one of the presents from the hands of the Child: he plays, as
it were, the part of royal treasurer or chamberlain. Dosso Dossi (640)
shows him kneeling in the background. In the present picture he stands,
in a red dress, under an archway, listening devoutly to the heavenly
harmony. All the _figures_ in Mabuse's picture (there are some thirty)
will repay examination. The Virgin's expression is well given; and, as
a study in contrasts, the reverent figures behind the kneeling king may
be compared with the man on the extreme left who, catching hold of a
pillar, is leaning out in curiosity to see the sights. There is much
other detail which might be described--the plants, for instance, in the
foreground and on the ruins; but enough has been said to indicate the
wealth and variety of interest which is to be found in this picture.


2856. A CAVALIER AND A LADY.

  _Pieter Quast_ (Dutch: 1606-1647).

      Quast was a painter and engraver of The Hague; his pictures are
      in the style of Brouwer and Isaac van Ostade.


2862. ST. JOHN GUALBERTO.

  _Lorenzo Monaco_ (Florentine: 1370-1425). _See 1897._

This picture represents St. John Gualberto, the Florentine (died 1073),
establishing the Order of the Vallombrosans, whose proper habit is of
a pale ash colour. He was Abbot of San Miniato, from which he retired
to Vallombrosa, establishing there the Order called after the place of
its original home.


2863. VIRGIN AND CHILD, WITH ANGELS.

School of _Benozzo Gozzoli_ (Florentine: 1420-1497). _See 283._

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[38] It is worth noting that a similar incident (which in this picture
has greatly shocked some of the critics) is introduced in Orcagna's
great fresco of the Triumph of Death. "The three kings of the German
legend are represented looking at the three coffins containing
three bodies of kings, such as themselves, in the last stage of
corruption.... Orcagna disdains both poetry and taste; he wants the
_facts_ only; he wishes to give the spectator the same lesson that
the kings had, and, therefore, instead of concealing the dead bodies,
he paints them with the most fearful detail. And then, he does not
consider what the three kings might most gracefully do. He considers
only what they actually, in all probability, _would have done_. He
makes them looking at the coffins with a startled stare, and one
holding his nose" (_Lectures on Architecture and Painting_, pp. 209,
210).

A comparison of the various opinions expressed on this picture would
form a diverting chapter in the history of art criticism. Thus in
Kugler's _Handbook_ we are told that it is "in many respects one of the
noblest pictures existing"; Sir Henry Cole ("Felix Summerly") called
it "doubtless the greatest Italian painting in this country"; Hazlitt
said it was "one of the best pictures on so large a scale that he
was acquainted with"; Waagen pronounced it to be "the most important
specimen of Italian art in England"; Solly called it "the second
picture in the world"; and Mrs. Jameson saw in it a combination of "the
characteristic power and beauty of the finest school of design and the
finest school of colouring in the world." For an equally uncompromising
condemnation see Landseer's _Catalogue_, pp. 92-119. It is interesting
to note that in some cases the admiration excited by the picture was
due to the dirt with which by long neglect and lapse in time it had
come to be discoloured. Thus Hazlitt says that "the figure of Lazarus
is very fine and bold. The flesh is _well-baked_, _dingy_, and ready to
crumble from the touch, when it is liberated from its dread confinement
to have life and motion impressed on it again" (_Criticisms on Art_,
1843, p. 9). Thus it was inferred that Sebastiano stooped to the
trivial artifice of imparting an appearance of half putrefaction to
the exhumed corpse. The absurdity of this criticism is well exposed by
Henry Merritt, the famous picture restorer, in his essay on "Dirt and
Pictures Separated" (_Art Criticism and Romance_, i. 69). The fact is
that the whole picture was sadly darkened with time, and that it had
become "embedded beneath a thick covering, compounded of half opaque
varnish, patches of modern paint, and dirt." It has only been found
possible partly to remove this covering. It may not be uninteresting to
add that the picture was a favourite with Charles Darwin. "Many of the
pictures in the National Gallery," he wrote, "gave me much pleasure;
that of Sebastian del Piombo exciting in me a sense of sublimity"
(_Life_, i. 49).

The poet Tennyson was another great admirer of the picture. His
son, describing visits with the poet to the National Gallery, says,
"he always led the way first of all to the "Raising of Lazarus," by
Sebastian del Piombo, and to Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne."" "The
Christ I call Christlike," said Tennyson on one occasion to Carlyle,
"is Sebastian del Piombo's in the National Gallery" (_Memoir_, ii.
235). It is possible that the poet may have written the stanzas cited
above with his eye on Sebastiano's picture.

[39] "When they went to nature, which I believe to have been a very
much rarer practice with them than their biographers would have us
suppose, they copied her like children, drawing what they knew to be
there, but not what they saw there" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii.
sec. ii. ch. iii. § 7).

[40] The "Claude Lorraine glass"--a convex dark, or coloured
hand-mirror used to concentrate the features of a landscape in a
subdued tone--"gives the objects of nature," says an old writer, "a
soft mellow tinge like the colouring of that master."

[41] But Ruskin does not quite keep his promise. "If Claude had been a
great man he would not have been so steadfastly set on painting effects
of sun; he would have looked at all nature, and at all art, and would
have painted sun effects somewhat worse, and nature universally much
better" (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. xviii. § 23).

[42] The passages quoted from Sir F. Burton are to be found in his
edition of the Official Catalogue (unabridged) of the Foreign Schools.
That work, which occupied the late Director's leisure for many years,
is a worthy monument of his wide learning and fastidious taste. A
large-paper edition was issued by the Stationery Office in 1892.

[43] See, however, the sunset picture of his predecessor, Bellini
(726). Connoisseurs should note that this picture is referred to by
Richter as bearing on the vexed question of Palma Vecchio's relation
with Titian, and showing that the latter imitated the former rather
than _vice versâ_ (_Italian Art in the National Gallery_, p. 85. See
also Morelli's _German Galleries_, p. 25).

[44] Called also "Sinon before Priam" (_Æneid_, ii. 79).

[45] The two pictures were bought by the nation in 1834 for £11,550.
The sum was then thought a very large one, and the trustees fortified
themselves with the opinion of experts. Amongst these Sir David Wilkie,
R.A., wrote, "It is certainly a large sum for two pictures; but giving
this difficulty its due weight, I would decidedly concur in giving this
sum rather than let them go out of the country, considering the rarity
of such specimens even in foreign countries, and their excellence as
examples of the high school to which they belong, to which it must be
the aim of every other school to approach."

[46] The picture is inscribed "Mariage d'Isaac avec Rebecca," but it is
a repetition with some variations in detail of the Claude known as _Il
Molino_ (The Mill) in the Doria palace at Rome. Ruskin characterises
this version of the subject as a "villainous and unpalliated copy."
"There is not," he adds, "one touch or line of even decent painting in
the whole picture; but as connoisseurs have considered it a Claude, as
it has been put in our Gallery for a Claude, and as people admire it
every day for a Claude, I may at least presume it has those qualities
of Claude in it which are wont to excite the public admiration, though
it possesses none of those which sometimes give him claim to it; and I
have so reasoned, and shall continue to reason upon it, especially with
respect to facts of form, which cannot have been much altered by the
copyist" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. i. § 9, sec.
iv. ch. ii. § 8).

[47] The following is the text of this portion of Turner's will: "I
give and bequeath unto the Trustees and Directors for the time being
of a certain Society or Institution, called the 'National Gallery'
or Society, the following pictures or paintings by myself, namely
Dido Building Carthage, and the picture formerly in the De Tabley
collection. To hold the said pictures or paintings unto the said
Trustees and Directors of this said Society for the time being,
in trust for the said Institution or Society for ever, subject,
nevertheless, to, for, and upon the following reservations and
restrictions only; that is to say, I direct that the said pictures
or paintings shall be hung, kept, and placed, that is to say, always
between the two pictures painted by Claude, The Seaport and Mill."
The "picture formerly in the De Tabley collection" is the "Sun rising
in a Mist," 479. Turner bought it back at Lord de Tabley's sale at
Christie's in 1827 for £514: 10s., and ever afterwards refused to part
with it. The other picture, the Carthage (498), was returned unsold
from the Academy, and Turner always kept it in his gallery. His friend
Chantrey used to make him offers for it, but each time its price rose
higher. "Why, what in the world, Turner, are you going to do with the
picture?" he asked. "Be buried in it," Turner replied--a remark he
often made to other friends.

[48] "So in N. Poussin's 'Phocion' (40) the shadow of the stick on the
stone in the right-hand corner, is shaded off and lost, while you see
the stick plainly all the way. In nature's sunlight it would have been
the direct reverse: you would have seen the shadow black and sharp all
the way down; but you would have had to look for the stick, which in
all probability would in several places have been confused with the
stone behind it" (_ibid._).

[49] Compare on this point G. Poussin's "Abraham and Isaac" (31).

[50] One may compare with Ruskin's description the similar one by
Tennyson of a distant view of Monte Rosa--

    How faintly-flush'd, how phantom-fair,
    Was Monte Rosa, hanging there
      A thousand shadowy-pencill'd valleys
    And snowy dells in a golden air.

  _The Daisy._


[51] "In some of the convents (in Mexico) there still exist, buried
alive like the inmates, various fine old paintings ... brought there by
the monks" (Dublin National Gallery Catalogue). The Spanish influence
gave birth, moreover, to a native Mexican School of painting, said to
be of considerable merit.

[52] "Murillo, of all true painters the narrowest, feeblest, and most
superficial, for those reasons the most popular" (_Two Paths_, § 57
_n._)--"The delight of vulgar painters (as Murillo) in coarse and
slurred painting merely for the sake of its coarseness, opposed to the
divine finish which the greatest and mightiest of men disdained not"
(_Modern Painters_, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. x. § 3).

[53] The French partiality for Murillo is traditional, dating back to
Marshal Soult's time, from whose collection the "Immaculate Conception"
was bought. Murillos were his favourite spoils from the Peninsular War.
"One day, showing General G---- his gallery in Paris, Soult stopped
opposite a Murillo, and said, 'I very much value _that_, as it saved
the lives of two estimable persons.' An Aide-de-camp whispered, 'He
threatened to have both shot on the spot unless they _gave_ up the
picture'" (Ford's _Handbook_).

[54] "He was not a _bad_ painter," continued Ruskin, "but he exercises
a most fatal influence on the English School, and therefore I owe
him an especial grudge. I have never entered the Dulwich Gallery for
fourteen years without seeing at least three copyists before the
Murillos. I _never_ have seen _one_ before the Paul Veronese....
I intend some time in my life to have a general conflagration of
Murillos." Ruskin would have been relieved to know that of late
years at the National Gallery Paul Veronese--and especially his St.
Helena--has been very frequently copied.

[55] Amongst the curiosities of criticisms are the differences
between experts as to whether this is a morning or an evening effect.
Contradictory opinions on the point were submitted to the Select
Committee of 1853, but as the picture had been "restored," each side
was able to impute the difficulty of deciding to the "ruinous" nature
of that operation.

[56] It may be interesting to note on the other side that Dr. Waagen
(whose experience of the sea is given under No. 149) finds the waves in
this picture to "run high," and to be "extraordinarily deep and full."

[57] Compare for equally defective perspective the covered portico in
30.

[58] Visitors to Venice may like to be reminded that most of Ruskin's
criticism upon Tintoret's works there is now easily accessible in (1)
_The Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret_, (2) _The Stones of
Venice_, travellers' edition, and (3) the reissue of the second volume
of _Modern Painters_. Mr. Ruskin always accounted his "discovery" of
Tintoret as one of the chief works of his life. "I have supplied," he
wrote in _Stones of Venice_ (1853), "somewhat copious notices of the
pictures of Tintoret, because they are much injured, difficult to read,
and entirely neglected by other writers on art." "I say with pride,"
he wrote in the epilogue to the second volume of _Modern Painters_
(1883), "what it has become my duty to express openly, that it was
left to me, and to me alone, first to discern, and then to teach, so
far as in this hurried century any such thing _can_ be taught, the
excellency and supremacy of five great painters, despised until I
spoke of them;--Turner, Tintoret, Luini, Botticelli, and Carpaccio.
Despised,--nay, scarcely in any true sense of the word, known." For
the Pre-Ruskinian view of Tintoret, the reader may consult Kugler's
_Handbook of Painting_.

[59] For an exhaustive and interesting history of the legend see Mr. J.
R. Anderson's Supplement to _St. Mark's Rest_. One account, it seems,
places both Perseus and St. George in the Nile Delta. Politicians who
say that England has gone to Egypt to save that country from itself may
perhaps see some significance in this. The superstitious in such things
will not forget either that one of Gordon's names was George.

[60] It is proper to mention that most of the critics dispute the
genuineness of this picture, and consider it a copy by some scholar
or imitator. "It is but a school repetition of a signed picture in
The Hermitage, with the omission, however, of a charming figure of
St. Catherine." In connection with this disputed point, it may not
be out of place to recall the famous forgery in which Andrea himself
played the chief part. The Duke of Mantua coveted Raphael's portrait of
Leo X., and obtained permission from the Pope to appropriate it. The
owner determined to meet force by fraud, and employed Andrea to make
a copy which was sent to the Duke as the original. The copy, when at
Mantua, deceived even Giulio Romano, who had himself taken part in the
execution of the original--a fact which might well induce some modesty
of judgment in connoisseurs.

[61] The title usually given to this picture, "Christ Disputing with
the Doctors," cannot be correct, for the figure of Christ is too old
for an incident which occurred when he was twelve years old.

[62] In the little-known collection in the library of Christ Church,
Oxford, there is a powerful but unpleasantly realistic picture of a
group in a butcher's shop, by one of the Carracci, which is perhaps a
family portrait.

[63] See Blake's _Auguries of Innocence_.

[64] Gaspard was particularly unfaithful to the variety of nature in
his representation of leaves (see 98). It is interesting therefore,
as showing how long it passed for truth, to note that Lanzi (i. 481)
singles out this point for special praise: "Everything that Gaspard
expresses is founded in nature; in his leaves he is as various as the
trees themselves."

[65] Compare on this point Claude's "Isaac and Rebecca," No. 12.

[66] This anecdote is a modern counterpart of that of Protogenes, the
rival of Apelles, who worked continuously, we are told, during the
siege of Rhodes by Demetrius Poliorcetes, notwithstanding that the
garden in which he painted was in the middle of the enemy's camp.
Demetrius, unsolicited, took measures for the painter's safety, and
when he was told that one of the masterpieces by Protogenes was in a
part of the town exposed to assault, he changed his plan of operations.

[67] "If you live in London you may test your progress _accurately_ by
the degree of admiration you feel for the leaves of vine round the head
of the Bacchus in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne" (_Elements of Drawing_,
p. 82). Another technical beauty referred to in the same book (p. 77
_n._) is "the points of light on the white flower in the wreath of the
dancing child-faun." Similarly, "the wing of the cupid in Correggio's
picture (10) is focused to two little grains of white at the top of
it." Elsewhere Ruskin calls attention to "the leaves which crown the
Bacchus, and the little dancing faun: every turn of the most subtle
perspective, and every gradation of colour, is given with the colossal
ease and power of the consummate master" (_Academy Notes_, 1855, p. 22).

[68] Ruskin's analysis of Rubens's technical method, which is here
omitted as foreign to the scope of this handbook, will be found in his
review of Eastlake's _History of Oil Painting_, now reprinted in _On
the Old Road_, i. §§ 98-136.

[69] "The conditions of art in Flanders--wealthy, _bourgeois_, proud,
free,--were not dissimilar to those of art in Venice. The misty flats
of Belgium have some of the atmospheric qualities of Venice. As Van
Eyck is to the Vivarini, so is Rubens to Paolo Veronese. This expresses
the amount of likeness and difference" (Symonds: _Renaissance_, iii.
265 _n_).

[70] See, for a further instance of this, what is said of Rubens's
landscapes below, under 66.

[71] Dr. Elisabeth Denio, in her monograph on Poussin (1899), adduces
good reason for altering the commonly accepted date 1594 to 1593.

[72] See _Lanzi_, i. 477, and a paper by Mr. R. Heath in the _Magazine
of Art_ for September 1877, where Poussin's theory is illustrated
from his pictures in the Louvre. English readers may be reminded that
Poussin is particularly well represented in the Dulwich Gallery.

[73] Elsewhere Ruskin says of Poussin, "Whatever he has done has been
done better by Titian." Also, "the landscape of Nicolo Poussin shows
much power, and is usually composed and elaborated on right principles,
but I am aware of nothing that it has attained of new or peculiar
excellence; it is a graceful mixture of qualities to be found in other
masters in higher degrees. In finish it is inferior to Leonardo's, in
invention to Giorgione's, in truth to Titian's, in grace to Raphael's"
(_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 14).

[74] "He feared the fascinations of colour, and once wrote from Venice
that he must flee from a place where they lured him too much. He did
not know how needless was the alarm" (Sir F. Burton).

[75] Constable, who made some studies from this picture, was of the
same opinion. In a letter to Fisher he describes it as "a noble
Poussin: a solemn, deep, still summer's noon, with large umbrageous
trees, and a man washing his feet at a fountain near them. Through the
breaks in the trees are mountains, and the clouds collecting about them
with the most enchanting effects possible. It cannot be too much to say
that this landscape is full of religious and moral feeling" (Leslie's
_Life of Constable_, p. 90).

[76] "Hang these pictures in a very strong light," said Rembrandt of
his early work. "The smell of paint is not good for the health," he
said many years afterwards, when a visitor came close up to one of his
later pictures.

[77] Baldwin Brown's _The Fine Arts_, p. 298, where Mr. Whistler's
beautiful description of a "nocturne" on the Thames is cited as being
in direct artistic descent from Rembrandt. "To Rembrandt," said the
late Mr. Wornum (_Epochs of Painting_, 1864, p. 421), "belongs the
glory of having first embodied in art and perpetuated [such] rare
and beautiful effects of nature" as are referred to above. Ruskin
took up the sentence, and replied with characteristic emphasis: "Such
effects are indeed rare in nature; but they are not rare, absolutely.
The sky, with the sun in it, does not usually give the impression
of being dimly lighted through a circular hole; but you may observe
a very similar effect any day in your coal-cellar. The light is not
Rembrandtesque on the current, or banks, of a river; but it is on
those of a drain. Colour is not Rembrandtesque, usually, in a clean
house; but is presently obtainable of that quality in a dirty one. And
without denying the pleasantness of the mode of progression, which Mr.
Hazlitt, perhaps too enthusiastically, describes (in a criticism upon
the present picture) as obtainable in a background of Rembrandt's, 'you
stagger from one abyss of obscurity to another,' I cannot feel it an
entirely glorious speciality to be distinguished, as Rembrandt was,
from other great painters, chiefly by the liveliness of his darkness,
and the dulness of his light. Glorious or inglorious, the speciality
itself is easily and accurately definable. It is the aim of the best
painters to paint the noblest things they can see by sunlight. It was
the aim of Rembrandt to paint the foulest things he could see--by
rushlight,"--a statement from which, of course, deduction must be made,
in forming a general idea of Ruskin's estimate, for his appreciation of
Rembrandt's portraits. _See_, _e.g._ under 51.

[78] To further understand Rembrandt's principle of choice, contrast
that of Veronese. See the passage quoted under No. 26.

[79] Yet Rembrandt's pictures are often more deceptive--look more like
reality--than others which are really more true. Why? It is because
"people are so much more easily and instinctively impressed by force of
light than truth of colour.... Give them the true contrast of light,
and they will not observe the false local colour." The references to
Ruskin are _Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iii. § 16; vol.
iv. pt. v. ch. ii. §§ 11-19; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi. § 10; _On the Old
Road_, i. 498-505.

[80] Ruskin, writing to the _Times_ in 1847, said of the then condition
of the picture: "I have no hesitation in asserting that for the present
it is utterly, and for ever partially, destroyed. I am not disposed
lightly to impugn the judgment of Mr. Eastlake (that is, the then
Keeper and subsequent Director, the late Sir C. L. Eastlake), but this
was indisputably of all the pictures in the Gallery that which least
required, and least could endure, the process of cleaning. It was in
the most advantageous condition under which a work of Rubens can be
seen; mellowed by time into more perfect harmony than when it left the
easel, enriched and warmed, without losing any of its freshness or
energy. The execution of the master is always so bold and frank as to
be completely, perhaps even most agreeably, seen under circumstances of
obscurity, which would be injurious to pictures of greater refinement;
and though this was, indeed, one of his most highly-finished and
careful works (to my mind, before it suffered this recent injury, far
superior to everything at Antwerp, Malines, or Cologne), this was a
more weighty reason for caution than for interference. Some portions of
colour have been exhibited which were formerly untraceable; but even
these have lost in power what they have gained in definitiveness,--the
majesty and preciousness of all the tones are departed, the balance of
distances lost. Time may, perhaps, restore something of the glow, but
never the subordination; and the more delicate portions of flesh tint,
especially the back of the female figure on the left, and of the boy in
the centre, are destroyed for ever" (_Arrows of the Chace_, i, 56, 57).

[81] The magnificent portrait No. 52 is by some critics ascribed to
Rubens. Van Dyck hardly ever signed his pictures.

[82] Not all artists have learnt from this great work gladly. It was
exhibited at the first exhibition of "Old Masters" at the British
Institution in 1815, and B. R. Haydon tells the following story:
"Lawrence was looking at the Gevartius when I was there, and as he
turned round, to my wonder, his face was boiling with rage as he grated
out between his teeth, 'I suppose they think we want teaching!'"
(_Autobiography_, i. 292).

[83] Such is the tradition. By many modern critics the picture is, on
internal evidence, taken away from Van Dyck and given to Rubens. Mr.
Watts in the article cited above says: "Attributed to Van Dyck, but
hardly, I think, suggesting his work, though it would be difficult to
attribute it to any other painter, unless, perhaps, on some occasion
Rubens might have been inspired with so fervent a love for art that he
forgot his satisfaction in scattering his over-ripe dexterity."

[84] The statement found in many biographies of the painter that he was
a brewer is a mistake. It arose from the fact that his daughter married
a brewer, and that the painter himself was buried from his son-in-law's
brewery.

[85] See _Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. vii. ch. iv. § 13.

[86] Ruskin (_ibid._, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. ii. ch. iv. § 16) notices
this treatment of Apollo under the head of "Imagination Contemplative,"
as an instance of an imaginative abstraction "in which the form of one
thing is fancifully indicated in the matter of another; as in phantoms
and cloud shapes, the use of which, in mighty hands, is often most
impressive, as in the cloudy-charioted Apollo of Nicolo Poussin in our
own Gallery, which the reader may oppose to the substantial Apollo in
Wilson's Niobe," see No. 110.

[87] This figure is specially good. It was to rival this great
landscape that James Ward (see 688), as he avows in his autobiography,
painted his "Fighting Bulls," now in the South Kensington Museum. "How
full of lithe natural movement," says Mr. J. T. Nettleship, "is the
man in the foreground, in heavy boots and feathered hat, stooping and
creeping towards the covey of partridges under cover of bramble and
bush, compared with the clumsy anatomical bulls in Ward's picture"
(_George Morland_, p. 54).

[88] Ruskin is here speaking of the somewhat similar "St. George"
picture in the Church of St. James at Antwerp.

[89] See also No. 98, in which the tree is said by Ruskin to be "a mere
jest" compared to this.

[90] No. 78 was formerly Sir Joshua Reynolds's "Holy Family," on which
notes will be found in Volume II. of this Handbook. The picture has now
been withdrawn from exhibition and little remains of it, for owing to
the excessive use of asphaltum the pigments have disappeared.

[91] "Garofano" is the Italian for "gillyflower" (or clove-pink),
and Tisio sometimes painted this flower as his sign-manual (like Mr.
Whistler's butterfly).

[92] Authorities differ between this title and "Pan teaching Apollo to
play on the pipes." Certainly there is the "Pan's pipe," but then if
it is Pan he ought to have goat's legs and horns. The fact that the
picture is a companion to "Silenus gathering Grapes" makes also in
favour of the description given in the text above.

[93] See also Ruskin's remarks on the companion storm piece, No. 36.

[94] It should be noted that this, as well as very many other pictures,
has of late years been cleaned. Thus 98 and 68 (in 1880), 36 and 40 (in
1868), have been "cleaned and varnished." 31 was "relined, repaired,
and varnished" in 1878; 161 was "cleaned and repaired" in 1868.

[95] The diminutive title "Il Canaletto" was originally applied
to Antonio's nephew and pupil, Bernardo Bellotto, but came to be
transferred to Antonio Canale himself. The two Canaletti painted so
much alike that their works are not easily distinguished.

[96] Ruskin, on one of his latest visits to the National Gallery
(1887), confessed that he had found himself admiring Canaletto. "After
all," he said to me, "he was a good workman in oils, whereas so much
of Turner's work is going to rack and ruin." Ruskin had made a similar
concession long before to Claude. Writing to Mr. Fawkes on the death
of Turner, he mentions a rumour that the artist had left only his
finished pictures to the nation. "Alas! these are finished in a double
sense--nothing but chilled fragments of paint on rotten canvas. The
Claudites will have a triumph when they get into the National Gallery"
(quoted in _The Nineteenth Century_, April 1900).

[97] An amusing instance of the naïve ignorance of the sea which
underlay much of the excessive admiration of Vandevelde is afforded by
Dr. Waagen, for many years director of the Berlin Gallery, and author
of _Treasures of Art in England_. At the end of a passage describing
his "first attempt to navigate the watery paths," he says: "For the
first time I understood the truth of these pictures (Bakhuizen's and
Vandevelde's), and the refined art with which, by intervening dashes
of sunshine, near or at a distance, and _ships to animate the scene_,
they produce such a charming variety on the surface of the sea." "For
the first time!" exclaims Ruskin (_Arrows of the Chace_, i. 16, 17),
"and yet this gallery-bred judge, this discriminator of coloured
shreds and canvas patches, who has no idea how ships animate the sea
until--charged with the fates of the Royal Academy--he ventures his
invaluable person from Rotterdam to Greenwich, will walk up to the work
of a man whose brow is hard with the spray of a hundred storms, and
characterise it as 'wanting in truth of clouds and waves.'" Dr. Waagen,
it should be explained, had, on the strength of his first "navigation
of the watery ways" pronounced Turner's works inferior in such truth to
Vandevelde. Clearly Dr. Waagen, more fortunate than most of our foreign
visitors, had a calm crossing.

[98] It is interesting that another contemporary man of letters, the
late Matthew Arnold, singled out these same lines for special praise:
"No passage in poetry," he said, "has moved and pleased me more"
(_Fortnightly Review_, August 1887, p. 299).

[99] In this town were born two other painters, who are sometimes known
by its name. Curiously enough, all three were originally masons.

[100] Ruskin speaks of "the ruffian Caravaggio, distinguished only by
his preference of candle-light and black shadows for the illustration
and reinforcement of villainy" (_On the Old Road_, i. § 48).

[101] According to Morelli (_Italian Masters in German Galleries_,
p. 56 _n._), this familiar tale is legendary, Francia being merely
an abbreviation of his Christian name, Francesco. But the painter
sometimes signed his name Franciscus Francia, a form which on Morelli's
hypothesis would be tautological.

[102] Francia's friendship with Raphael, on which art historians
have based many theories and spun many interesting tales, is now
discredited, the documents in question being comparatively modern
forgeries (see p. 366 of Kugler's _Italian Schools of Painting_, 5th
edition, revised by Sir A. H. Layard, 1887, elsewhere referred to as
_Layard_).

[103] Vasari's story that Francia died of chagrin on seeing how far the
whole work of his own life was transcended by Raphael's picture of St.
Cecilia, which was sent to its destination at Bologna about 1516, is
hardly credible.

[104] Ruskin said of this picture in 1847: "The attribution to him of
the wretched panel which now bears his name is a mere insult" (_Arrows
of the Chace_, i. 64). "Petrus Peruginus" is inscribed in gold on the
base of the mantle of the Virgin, but the picture may be the work of
his disciple, Lo Spagna (see 1032).

[105] Up to the time of the Van Eycks the general process of artistic
painting for detached pictures was tempera. In this method the colours,
after being ground with chalk, were laid on with a medium of water,
white of eggs, juice of unripe figs, or some similar substance. Some
kind of oil varnish was, however, often laid on afterwards, and a few
Italian artists sometimes tried to mix their colours with oil in the
first instance; but the results cannot have been satisfactory, for even
Crivelli, who died in 1495, was still exclusively a painter in tempera.
The objection to tempera, so far at any rate as northern countries
were concerned, was that it suffered from the damp. Thus in an old
retable in Westminster Abbey, so painted, the painting has flaked off.
The objection to the early attempts at using oil as a medium was that
it took a long time to dry. This caused Van Eyck incessant annoyance;
his knowledge of chemistry led him to make experiments, and at last he
obtained a medium which hastened the drying without the necessity of
exposure to the sun. This medium was probably a mixture of linseed and
nut oils. This method is different from that now called oil-painting.
Now the colours are laid on by an oily medium, and when the picture is
finished the whole surface is protected by a transparent varnish. Then
the varnish was incorporated with the surface colours (see Conway's
_Early Flemish Artists_, p. 119; and Wauters's _Flemish School of
Painting_, p. 35).

[106] _Arrows of the Chace_, i. 66. "John Bellini is the only artist
who appears to me to have united, in equal and magnificent measures,
justness of drawing, nobleness of colouring, and perfect manliness
of treatment, with the purest religious feeling. He did, as far as
it is possible to do it, instinctively and unaffectedly, what the
Carracci only pretended to do. Titian colours better, but has not his
piety; Leonardo draws better, but has not his colour; Angelico is
more heavenly, but has not his manliness, far less his powers of art"
(_Stones of Venice_, Venetian Index). Morelli's estimate is the same;
see _German Galleries_, p. 361.

[107] This letter of Dürer's gives an interesting glimpse into the art
life of the time. "I have many good friends among the Italians, who
warn me not to eat and drink with their painters. Many also of them
are my enemies; they copy my things for the churches, picking them
up whenever they can. Yet they abuse my style, saying that it is not
antique art, and that therefore it is not good. But Giambellini has
praised me much before many gentlemen; he wishes to have something of
mine; he came to me and begged me to do something for him, and is quite
willing to pay for it. And every one gives him such a good character
that I feel an affection for him. He is very old, and is yet the best
in painting; and the thing which pleased me so well eleven years ago
has now no attractions for me" (_Catalogue of Standard Series in the
Ruskin Drawing School_, P. 7).

[108] See _Report of Select Committee on the National Gallery_, 1853,
p. 432, where the whole story will be found very frankly told in Sir C.
Eastlake's evidence.

[109] Similarly Raphael Mengs, a later Spanish painter, said of
Velazquez that he appeared to have painted with his will only, without
the aid of his hand.

[110] I read the other day in an otherwise intelligent memoir of
Ruskin that "a generation which admired Velazquez had outlived the art
criticism of Ruskin." Not outlived, but absorbed, and so forgotten.
It was Ruskin who, half a century before, proclaimed the consummate
excellence of Velazquez--the "greatest artist of Spain," and "one of
the great artists of the world"; the master to all schools in his
"consummate ease"; the man who was "never wrong." In his admiration of
Velazquez Ruskin never wavered. The citations above given are from his
earlier books. In his later period, a picture by Velazquez was included
among the "Four Lesson Photographs" as "an example of the highest reach
of technical perfection yet reached in art; all effort and labour
seeming to cease in the radiant peace and simplicity of consummated
human power" (_Fors Clavigera_, 1876, p. 188).

[111] This was written in 1846. In 1853 some "horrible revelations"
were made about the picture before the Select Committee on the National
Gallery. Ruskin turned out to be curiously wrong, but also curiously
right. He was wrong; for so far from the picture being "in genuine and
perfect condition," a considerable portion of the canvas, as we now
see it, turned out to be not by Velazquez's hand at all. Lord Cowley,
its former owner, had sent it to a Mr. Thane, a picture dealer, to be
relined. A too hot iron was used, and a portion of the paint entirely
disappeared. Thane was in despair. The picture haunted him at nights.
He saw the figure of it in his dreams becoming more and more attenuated
until it appeared at length a skeleton. He was near going mad over
it, when a good angel came to his rescue in the shape of Lance, the
flower and fruit painter, who offered to restore the missing parts
out of his head. So far Ruskin was decidedly wrong. But he was also
right. The parts which Lance painted in "out of his head" were the
groups on the left of the foreground, and some of the middle distance.
"I endeavoured," he says, "to fill up the canvas, such as I supposed
Velazquez would have done; and I had great facility in doing that,
because if there was a man without a horse here, there was a horse
without a man there, so I could easily take his execution as nearly
as possible, and my own style of painting enabled me to keep pretty
near the mark"(!). But the high lights of the sky, he particularly
added, were untouched by him. So that there Ruskin was right. The
picture, when restored to its owner, gave complete satisfaction,
and Lance's share in it was kept a secret. A year or two later he
must have felt a proud man. The picture was being exhibited at the
British Gallery. In front of it Lance met two _cognoscenti_ of his
acquaintance. "It looks to me," he said, testing them, "as if it had
been a good deal repainted."--"No! you're wrong there," they said; "it
is remarkably free from repaints." It should be added that soon after
the Parliamentary inquiry referred to above, a tracing of Goya's copy,
procured from Madrid, showed in fact that the restored work differed
but slightly from the copy, and Lance's work was probably far less
important and extensive than he asserted. An idea of the original
condition of the picture may be had from a reduced replica, or first
sketch, now in the Wallace Collection.

[112] The view Diderot thus took of Greuze's art suggests the
importance of historical perspective in criticism. Pictures, like
everything else, should be judged with reference to contemporary
circumstances, as well as by the standard of abstract principle. From
the former point of view Greuze, as we have seen, is a moralist in
painting. From the latter Ruskin suggests the consideration "how far
the value of a girl's head by Greuze would be lowered in the market if
the dress, which now leaves the bosom bare, were raised to the neck"
(_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. chap. v. § 7).

[113] Another instance of this intimate union of art with business may
be seen in the number of Dutch artists of the period who themselves
held municipal office. See, for instance, Terburg (864) and Delen
(1010). Many of the Italian painters also were men of business and of
official standing. Thus Titian was a timber merchant; whilst Manni,
Perugino, and Pinturicchio were all magistrates.

[114] "The bit of bluish ribbed paper on which he made his design
in light and dark strokes, now gone brown, and which he had pricked
through for the purpose of tracing the design on the panel, is framed
beside it. He left it about, not thinking that in 350 years it would
be under glass in the distant city of London, stared at by English
roughs, who would say, "Sithee Bill, he's pricked it a' through with
a pin, and spilt th' ile on it!" for there are two or three of these
amber-coloured blurs which come from a sketch being inadvertently put
down on a palette knife" (_Letters of James Smetham_, p. 168).

[115] These pictures, like the other Florentine works here exhibited,
except 564 (which is on linen cloth attached to wood) and 276 (which is
in fresco), are painted in tempera on wood. _Tempera_ (or distemper)
painting is a generic term for the various methods in which some
other substance than oil was the medium. Various substances were thus
used--such as gum, glue or size, flour-paste, white of egg, milk of
figs. Cennino Cennini, who wrote a treatise on painting at the end of
the fourteenth century, professes to give the exact method of Giotto.
Egg beaten up with water was preferred by him, except where the
yellowness of the mixture injured the purity of the colour. The colours
thus mixed were laid on to a panel (or on to a cloth stretched over the
panel) previously prepared with a smooth white ground of plaster. And
finally oil or albumen was used to go over the whole surface. This was
the practice in general use for all detached pictures until the middle
of the fifteenth century, when what is known as "the Van Eyck method"
came into vogue (see under 186).

=Fresco= painting is painting upon walls of wet plaster with earths of
different colours diluted with water. It is so called from the colour
being applied to the _fresh_ wet surface of lime, but it is of two
kinds: (1) _fresco secco_, when the plaster of lime has been allowed
to _dry_ on the wall and is then saturated with water before painting;
this was the method in use till after Giotto's time; (2) _buon fresco_,
when the colours are laid on to the fresh plaster before it is yet dry.
(The fullest account of these various technical processes and their
history is Sir C. Eastlake's "Materials for a History of Oil Painting,"
a review of which by Ruskin appeared in the _Quarterly Review_, and is
reprinted in _On the Old Road_, vol. i.).

[116] The note in the Official Catalogue says that the picture does not
correspond in the scheme of colour to the works of Velazquez's early
period. On the other hand, "it shows so decided an affinity with the
fine picture by Zurbaran, in the Palace of San Telmo, at Seville, not
only in colouring but in every detail of the treatment, that there
can be no doubt that the attribution to Velazquez was an error, and
that Zurbaran is the true painter of this beautiful work, which may
be considered the best picture he ever painted." But "we would fain
see proof," says another critic, "that Zurbaran ever painted a head
like that of the Divine Child. The rest of the picture recalls the
early Seville manner of Velazquez in the style of Ribera" (_Quarterly
Review_, April 1899).

[117] This picture, when first purchased for the National Gallery in
1853, was ascribed to Giorgione. For many years it was given to the
"School of Bellini." In 1883 it was identified by Messrs. Crowe and
Cavalcaselle as a work by Catena. Signor Morelli and other critics
of his school supported this view, which in 1898 was adopted by the
authorities of the Gallery. No. 694 has also been so attributed to him
in the Catalogue. Other pictures which have at one time or another been
connected with Catena are 599, 812, and 1160.

[118] "The roguish little terrier pretends not to see what is going
on. But what are the partridges doing behind the chair of the Blessed
Virgin? Was the Knight a worldling, given to sport, but arrested in
the pursuit of pleasure by some inward voice or vision; and so, taking
the result of the day's work, he lays it at the feet of the Divine
Child and His Mother? Or was worship simply the pious Knight's godly
commencement of the day? Why, too, is the dog so sly looking? Is that
little mass of curly white wool a sceptic, doubting his master's good
resolutions?" (Sophia Beale in _Good Words_, July 1895).

[119] Ruskin, in his classification of artists from this point of view,
calls them "sensualists," reserving the traditional title "naturalists"
to the greatest men, whose "subject is infinite as nature, their colour
equally balanced splendour and sadness, reaching occasionally the
highest degrees of both, and their chiaroscuro equally balanced between
light and shade." This class represents the proper mean. In excess on
one side are the "purists" (Angelico, Perugino, Memlinc, Stothard), who
take the good and leave the evil. "The faces of their figures express
no evil passions; the skies of their landscapes are without storm;
the prevalent character of their colour is brightness, and of their
chiaroscuro fulness of light." Then in excess on the other side are
the "sensualists" (Salvator Rosa, Caravaggio, Ribera), who "perceive
and imitate evil only. They cannot draw the trunk of a tree without
blasting and shattering it, nor a sky except covered with stormy
clouds; they delight in the beggary and brutality of the human race;
their colour is for the most part subdued or lurid, and the greatest
spaces of their pictures are occupied by darkness" (_Stones of Venice_,
vol. ii. ch. vi.). Elsewhere, Ruskin speaks of Caravaggio and Ribera as
"the black slaves of painting" (_Elements of Drawing_, p. 317).

[120] This is the story told by Dominici, the Neapolitan historian.
According to Cean Bermudez, following Palomino (the Spanish historian),
Ribera died at Naples honoured and rich.

[121] The tradition that he was a natural son of the Barbarella family,
and in consequence called Barbarelli, appears to be unfounded.

[122] "Two figures of Giorgione's are still traceable, one of them
(wrote Ruskin in 1846), singularly uninjured, is seen from far above
and below the Rialto, flaming like the reflection of a sunset" (_Modern
Painters_ vol. i. ed. 3 pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 30). This beautiful
figure was engraved by Ruskin for his fifth volume; he called her from
her glowing colour "the Hesperid Aeglé."

[123] Ruskin's seven are Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoret,
Correggio, Reynolds, and Turner (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch.
xi, § 8, _n_).

[124] A reaction in this respect is observable in the latest writer on
Giorgione (Mr. Herbert Cook in the "Great Masters" Series), who shows
good cause for restoring many pictures to the master. The National
Gallery, he says (p. 95), affords unrivalled opportunity for studying
the various phases of Giorgione at different stages of his career. Nos.
1160 and 1173 represent his earliest style; No. 1123, his later; Nos.
269 and 636 are intermediate.

[125] A contemporary document, recently discovered, proves that
the artist died of the plague. (See appendix to Mr. Herbert Cook's
_Giorgione_, 1900).

[126] Lecture at Oxford 1884 (reported in Cook's _Studies in Ruskin_,
p. 251). See also the "Traveller's edition" of the _Stones of Venice_,
vol. ii. ch. vi., where the picture is described as "one which unites
every artistic quality for which the painting of Venice has become
renowned with a depth of symbolism and nobleness of manner exemplary of
all that in any age of art has characterised its highest masters." A
copy of this masterpiece is in the collection of the Arundel Society,
now to be seen in the National Gallery.

[127] In an interesting discussion with Sir J. E. Millais, R.A., Mr.
Watts, R.A., refers to the colours in this picture. Sir J. Millais
had said that time and age are the greatest old masters, and that old
Venetian colours were crude. Mr. Watts replied: "The colour of the
best-preserved pictures by Titian shows a marked distinction between
light flesh tones and white drapery. This is most distinctly seen in
the small 'Noli me Tangere' in our National Gallery, in the so-called
'Venus' of the Tribune, and in the 'Flora' of the Uffizi, both in
Florence, and in Bronzino's 'All is Vanity,' also in the National
Gallery (651). In the last-named picture, for example, the colour is
as crude and the surface as bare of mystery as if it had been painted
yesterday. As a matter of fact, white unquestionably tones down, but
never becomes colour; indeed, under favourable conditions, and having
due regard to what is underneath, it changes very little. In the 'Noli
me Tangere,' to which I have referred, the white sleeve of the Magdalen
is still a beautiful white, quite different from the white of the
fairest of Titian's flesh--proving that Titian never painted his flesh
white" (_Magazine of Art_, January 1889).

[128] Or possibly at Vicenza. See _Layard_, i. 283 n. The words in the
document relied upon to establish his birth at Vicenza are ambiguous,
and may refer to his father.

[129] Its ascription to Botticelli's own hand is, however, questioned
by many critics. Thus Dr. Richter says, "I know of no authentic picture
by Botticelli in which the drawing of the hands and feet is so poor
and coarse as are here, for instance, those of the Infant Saviour; the
type of the child is positively repulsive, whereas in Botticelli's own
works it is pre-eminently in the representation of the Infant Christ
that his great merits are strikingly apparent" (_Lectures on the
National Gallery_, p. 62). The child, whether painted by Botticelli or
by another hand, is undeniably ugly; but the expression of the Madonna,
and the figures of the Baptist and the Angel seem to me to show
certainly the work of the master himself. Moreover, the critics who
dispute the authenticity of this picture admit that of No. 915. Yet,
as "D. S. M." says, "the mother here is the same person as the Venus,
looking out of the picture with the same effect of gentle detachment,
circumscribed with the same draughtsman's lines; the infant, whose type
Dr. Richter finds 'positively repulsive,' is the same infant as the
Satyrs of the other picture, and so all through" (_Saturday Review_,
Feb. 18, 1899). On the back of the panel is written in the style of
the 16th century the name of Giuliano da San Gallo, the celebrated
architect, who was also a painter. There are drawings from his hand in
the British Museum, which show that he came from Botticelli's school.
His name on the back of this picture proves, it is argued, that it is
by him. It may, however, very probably only signify that the picture
formerly belonged to him.

[130] Mr. Pater, in a well-known passage, gives a different explanation
of the peculiar sentiment in Botticelli's Madonnas. "Perhaps you have
sometimes wondered why they attract you more and more, and often
come--although conformed to no obvious type of beauty--back to you when
the Madonnas of Raphael and the Virgins of Fra Angelico are forgotten.
At first, contrasting them with those, you may have thought that there
was something even mean or abject in them, for the lines of the face
have little nobleness, and the colour is wan. For with Botticelli she
too, though she holds in her hands the 'Desire of all Nations,' is one
of those who are neither for God nor for his enemies (see under III.
1126), and her choice is on her face. She shrinks from the presence of
the Divine Child, and pleads in unmistakable undertones for a warmer,
lower humanity" (W. H. Pater: _Studies of the Renaissance_).

    You promise heavens free from strife,
      Pure truth and perfect change of will;
    But sweet, sweet is this human life,
      So sweet I fain would breathe it still.
    Your chilly stars I can forgo:
      This warm, kind world is all I know.

  IONICA: _Mimnermus in Church_.


[131]

    The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle
    That's curdied by the frost from purest snow
    And hangs on Dian's temple.


[132] The doors of the temple of "two-headed Janus" at Rome were always
thrown open when the State was at war, and only closed in time of peace.

[133] The whole, or part, of this picture was at one time freely
ascribed to Raphael; but Morelli has effectually disposed of the
superstition by showing, amongst other arguments, that the drawings
for Tobias and the Angel (in the Oxford University Gallery and in
the British Museum) are undoubtedly by Perugino (_Italian Art in the
German Galleries_, 1883, p. 289). The Oxford drawing is described
and discussed, on the assumption that it is by Raphael, in Sir J. C.
Robinson's _Drawings by Michael Angelo and Raffaello_, p. 129.

[134] For a record of his movements the reader may refer to Morelli's
_Italian Masters in German Galleries_, 1883, pp. 285-291.

[135] Vasari's bias against the Umbrian master is too marked for any of
his attacks to be accepted without corroboration.

[136] In a critique of F. Walker's "Fishmongers' Stalls," Ruskin says:
"If the reader will waste five minutes of his season in London in the
National Gallery, he may see in the hand of Perugino's Tobias a fish
worth all these on the boards together" (_Arrows of the Chace_, i. 177).

[137] With regard to the "purist ideal" it should be noticed that
"these fantasies of the earlier painters, though they darkened faith,
never hardened _feeling_; on the contrary, the frankness of their
unlikelihood proceeded mainly from the endeavour on the part of the
painter to express, not the actual fact, but the enthusiastic state
of his own feelings about the fact; he covers the Virgin's dress with
gold, not with any idea of representing the Virgin as she ever was,
or ever will be seen, but with a burning desire to show what his love
and reverence would think fittest for her. He erects for the stable
a Lombardic portico, not because he supposes the Lombardi to have
built stables in Palestine in the days of Tiberius, but to show that
the manger in which Christ was laid is, in his eyes, nobler than the
grandest architecture in the world. He fills his landscape with church
spires and silver streams, not because he supposes that either were in
sight at Bethlehem, but to remind the beholder of the peaceful course
and succeeding power of Christianity" (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt.
iv. ch. iv. § 10). For a different kind of feeling in "naturalistic"
art, see under 744.

[138] Visitors who are interested in such points of connoisseurship
may be glad of this summary with regard to the works ascribed in the
Official Catalogue to the associated painters, Fra Filippo Lippi,
Filippino Lippi, and Botticelli. The _undisputed_ pictures of Fra
Filippo are 248, 666, and 667; of Filippino, 293 and 927. The pictures
592 and 1033 have marked resemblances both to Fra Filippo, Filippino,
and to Botticelli, and are ascribed by different critics to one or
other of those masters or pupils. 598 and 1124 are often ascribed
to a pupil of Filippino; the pictures 586 and 589 to a pupil of Fra
Filippo. The _undisputed_ pictures of Botticelli are 1034 and 1126. The
pictures 226, 275, 782, 915, and 916, are all ascribed by some critics
to a pupil of his only, whilst to Botticelli himself has now been
ascribed the portrait 626, formerly classed as "Unknown." To a supposed
painter, christened by the critics "Amico di Sandro," 1124 and 1412 are
attributed.

[139] _Layard_, ii. 621. Similarly Ruskin says: "The possession of
the Pisani Veronese will happily enable the English public and the
English artist to convince themselves how sincerity and simplicity
in statements of fact, power of draughtsmanship, and joy in colour,
were associated in a perfect balance in the great workmen in Venice"
(_Catalogue of the Turner Sketches and Drawings_, 1858, p. 10). As
an instance of Veronese's "economical work"--a sure sign of a great
painter--Ruskin refers to "the painting of the pearls on the breast of
the nearer princess, in our best Paul Veronese. The lowest is about
the size of a small hazel nut, and falls on her rose-red dress. Any
other but a Venetian would have put a complete piece of white paint
over the dress, for the whole pearl, and painted that into the colours
of the stone. But Veronese knows beforehand that all the dark side of
the pearl will reflect the red of the dress. He will not put white over
the red, only to put red over the white again. He leaves the actual
dress for the dark side of the pearl, and with two small separate
touches, one white, another brown, places its high light and shadow.
This he does with perfect care and calm: but in two decisive seconds.
There is no dash nor display, nor hurry, nor error. The exactly right
thing is done in the exactly right place, and not one atom of colour,
nor moment of time spent vainly. Look close at the two touches,--you
wonder what they mean. Retire six feet from the picture--the pearl is
there!" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. viii. ch. iv. § 18). "One of
the chief delights which any one who really enjoys painting finds in
that art as distinct from sculpture, is in the exquisite inlaying or
joiner's work of it, the fitting of edge to edge with a manual skill,
precisely correspondent to the close application of crowded notes
without the least slur, in fine harp or piano-playing. In many of the
finest works of colour on a large scale, there is even some admission
of the quality given to a painted window by the dark lead bars between
the pieces of glass. Both Tintoret and Veronese, when they paint on
dark grounds, continually stop short with their tints just before they
touch others, leaving the dark ground showing between in a narrow bar.
In the Paul Veronese in the National Gallery, you will find every here
and there pieces of outline which you would suppose were drawn with
a brown pencil. But no! look close, and you will find that they are
the dark ground _left_ between two tints, brought close to each other
without touching" (_Lectures on Landscape_, § 68). Elsewhere, Ruskin
calls special attention to the painting of "the drooped left hand of
the princess, holding her crown" (_Academy Notes_, 1858, p. 46).

[140] An even more striking instance is to be found in Veronese's
picture of the Last Supper, now in the Academy of Venice. Here
too he introduced his favourite dog, as well as dwarfs and armed
retainers. He was summoned before the Inquisition for such irreverent
anachronisms; and the account of his cross-examination is most amusing
and instructive reading. A translation will be found in the appendix to
Ruskin's _Guide to the Academy at Venice_.

[141] Some readers may like to be referred to the passages in which
Ruskin discusses the place of the dog in art, with special reference
to Veronese. They are, _Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vi., and
_The Eagle's Nest_, i. ch. viii.

[142] Richter (_Italian Art in the National Gallery_, p. 74) disputes
this. The kneeling girls are, he believes, the artist's daughters, whom
he has also introduced into a picture in the Louvre, and the courtier
presenting them is Veronese himself.

[143] The pattern of the Madonna's robe in this picture is worth
notice--"a good specimen of the treatment, probably taken from Persian
examples, of a ground sprinkled with conventional sprays of flowers
spaced regularly" (Vacher).

[144] The three portraits, 1022, 1023, and 1025, formerly in the Casa
Fenaroli at Brescia, were there all attributed to Moretto. Signor
Morelli was the first to recognise in the two former the hand and mind
of Moroni, under whose name they were sold to the National Gallery.

[145] Mr. Dickes's ingenious and interesting explanation is now
accepted by the authorities, and there can be little doubt of its
correctness. The motto had previously been misread as του λιαν ποθω
which was interpreted "by the desire of the extreme." The picture was
for many years in the possession of the Martinengo Cesaresco family,
and passed for a portrait of their ancestor Count Sciarra. The motto
was interpreted as referring to the Count's desire to avenge the death
of his father, who had been assassinated. The desire of the extreme,
the activity of a restless spirit, was with the Count to the end, and
he died fighting in France in the campaign which ended in a defeat of
the Huguenots at the battle of Moncontour, October 3, 1569. But the
Count Sciarra was a soldier-adventurer, showing no characteristics
accordant with the nobleman before us other than that, according to a
Brescian historian, "his eyes gleamed with an unconquerable desire."
But the inscription is undoubtedly as given in the text, the accents
being all clearly marked. The portrait is clearly not of a restless man
of action, so much as of a dilettante. The dates of the Count Sciarra's
career are also inconsistent with his being painted in this picture
of Moretto's best period. The statements on behalf of the traditional
identification made by the Contessa Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco
(_Athenæum_, Aug. 12, 1893) do not touch the points.

[146] The feeling which one may thus find in these paintings of
four centuries ago still lingers amongst the Italian peasantry, as
readers of Miss Alexander's _Roadside Songs_ and _Christ's Folk in the
Apennine_ (both edited by Mr. Ruskin) will know.

[147] It may be worth noting that, according to the son of Turner's
friend, Trimmer, this picture "had an entire new sky painted at the
desire of Lawrence and other brother artists, who, when he had altered
it, said the picture was ruined" (Thornbury's _Life of Turner_, i. 175).

[148] Dr. Richter, in laying down the law to the contrary, gives
too narrow an interpretation to Vasari's words. The Margaritone is
certainly inferior to the best Byzantine work, but it adheres to the
characteristics noticed above. Dr. Richter says: "This curious, if
uninteresting painter, in all probability would never have emerged
from his modest sphere of awkward provincialism into the full light of
history but for the special praise bestowed upon him by his obliging
countryman, Vasari. The latter states definitely, among other things,
that Margaritone painted in the _maniera greca_; nevertheless, a single
glance at the picture in the National Gallery is sufficient to convince
the beholder that in reality this is not the case. Margaritone's
pictures appear to me to be drawn in the wild and grotesque style
prevalent in Italy during the early middle ages" (_Lectures on the
National Gallery_, p. 11).

[149] Dr. Richter ascribes all these pictures to the School of Duccio
(see _Lectures on the National Gallery_, pp. 4-10.).

[150] So described in the Official Catalogue. But "is the female
saint on the right wing of the triptych really St. Catherine of
Alexandria? Only the beginning of the inscription on either side of
the figure containing the name can here still be deciphered. It runs
thus: SCA (Saint) AL. The reading 'Catherine' thus apparently becomes
inadmissible. Besides, the emblems of this female saint are decidedly
not those of Catherine of Alexandria, who is always represented with a
wheel as the emblem of her martyrdom, while the saint in the picture
before us holds in her right hand a palm branch (?) and in her left a
small cross, the emblem of confessors" (Richter's _Italian Art in the
National Gallery_, p. 9).

[151] This head is said to bear a marked resemblance to Mr. Swinburne
as a young man (see W. B. Scott's _Autobiographical Notes_, ii. 18).

[152] It was a practice at Italian weddings that the bride should be
presented, as part of her dowry, with a coffer, which was intended
to hold her trousseau and wedding presents. Some very fine specimens
of these _cassoni_ may be seen in the South Kensington Museum. They
belong principally to the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. The typical
_cassone_ measured about six feet in length by two in height and two in
breadth. The front and ends were decorated with paintings or carvings.
The subjects depicted are either marriage scenes or stories borrowed
from the Scriptures, from the classics, or from Petrarch. Many of the
panel pictures in the National Gallery once adorned these _cassoni_.
See, for instance, Nos. 1218 and 1219. A favourite subject was the
allegory entitled "The Triumph of Love, Chastity, and Death," of which
an excellent example is at South Kensington. The panel in this Gallery,
No. 1196, has a similar subject.

[153] This picture and the _tondo_ of the same subject (1033) are by
many critics ascribed to Botticelli. "In my opinion," says Morelli,
"the two excellent but somewhat defaced pictures in the National
Gallery, 592 and 1033, are works not of Filippino, but of Botticelli,
whose dramatic powers are well displayed here" (_Italian Masters in
German Galleries_, p. 236). For a full discussion leading to the same
conclusion, see Monkhouse's _In the National Gallery_, p. 73.

[154] Miss Betham-Edwards, on a visit to the painter at By, was shown
some sketches for "The Horse Fair." "'There you have a Boulonnais,' I
observed, as we contemplated the study of a fine black cart-horse. This
remark gratified her. 'I am glad to find a stranger so much interested
in our cart-horses'" (_Anglo-French Reminiscences_, ch. xxv.). Rosa
Bonheur's knowledge of the animal world of France was very wide and
precise.

[155] This was Rosa Bonheur's own faith. "I believe," she once said,
"in a just God, and a Paradise of the just. But religion (_i.e._ the
religion of Rome) does not altogether satisfy me. I hold it monstrous
that animals are supposed to be without souls. My poor lioness loved
me. Thus she had more soul than certain human beings who do not know
what it is to love anything."

[156] "Giulio Romano did a little of everything for the Dukes of
Mantua,--from painting the most delicate and improper little fresco
for a bedchamber, to restraining the Po and Mincio with immense dykes,
restoring ancient edifices and building new ones, draining swamps and
demolishing and reconstructing whole streets, painting palaces and
churches, and designing the city slaughter-house" (W. D. Howells's
_Italian Journeys_, "Ducal Mantua"). Giulio's departure from Rome to
Mantua was due to the scandal caused by the publication of some obscene
designs of his (see _Symonds_, v. 341).

[157] "The piece of St. Catherine's dress over her shoulders is painted
on the under dress, after that was dry. All its value would have been
lost, had the slightest tint or trace of it been given previously. This
picture, I think, and certainly many of Tintoret's, are painted on dark
grounds; but this is to save time, and with some loss to the future
brightness of the colour" (_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. viii. ch. iv.
§ 17 _n._).

[158] Robert Browning, however, notes "the _bonne bourgeoisie_ of his
pictures; the dear common folk of his crowds, divinely pure they all
are, but fresh from the streets and market-place" (_Letters of Robert
and E. B. Browning_, i. 197). Mr. Langton Douglas in an illustrated
monograph on _Fra Angelico_ (1900) lays stress on the painter's
"strength and freedom" as shown in the "Adoration of the Magi" at San
Marco, or the "San Lorenzo giving alms" in the studio of Pope Nicholas;
illustrates the influence of contemporary architecture and sculpture on
his work; and characterises him not as "a saint with a happy knack of
illustration," but as "an artist who happened to be a saint."

[159] "This," says Mr. Hipkins of the present picture, "is the grandest
and most extended mediæval band on record, worthy of the heavenly Host,
to declare the praises of the Blessed Trinity." Mr. Hipkins gives an
interesting identification and description of the instruments employed.
To the left of the centre compartment we may find a viol, a rebec, a
clarion, trumpets, harp, cither, double flute, and psaltery--also a
tambourine, beaten with the hand, a tabor, and a portable organ. In
the centre, under Christ, are two organs. The player on the pipe and
tabor, left of the Redeemer, blows what seems to be a short French
whistle. "Next to this musician is a cymbal player. The time beater is
apparently no less required where time exists no more than he is in our
terrestrial world; such discipline of rhythm is hereby sanctified." "In
the upper rows, on the left hand of the Redeemer, we see one of those
large guitar-viols which were used by the troubadours" (see further
_The Hobby Horse_, No. 1, 1893, pp. 14-16).

[160] "The many small figures which are seen here surrounded by a
celestial glory are so beautiful," says Vasari of this picture, "that
they appear to be truly beings of paradise; nor can he who approaches
them be ever weary of regarding their beauty."

[161] Now ascribed by many critics to Bouts (see 783).

[162] Or more correctly, Piero dei' Franceschi, after the family name
of his mother. Her Christian name was Romana, and Piero's father, it
has now been ascertained, continued living during many years of his
son's career. The year of Piero's birth is unknown.

[163] This is a more charitable judgment than contemporary documents
would suggest. In 1450 Fra Filippo was thrown into prison for a debt
which he denied, and under torture confessed that he had forged the
receipt. He was deprived of his rectory, and appealed to the Pope, who,
however, confirmed the sentence, in a brief in which the painter is
accused of "numerous and abominable wickednesses."

[164] It is interesting to note the cartellino, or little card at the
foot of the picture, on which Antonello inscribes his name and the
date. This cartellino was taken as a model by Giovanni Bellini and
subsequent Venetian artists (see _e.g._ 189 and 280).

[165] Comparing him with Italian painters, his period of activity is
seen to be coincident with the earlier work of Carpaccio and Perugino;
he died while Raphael was still a boy. Crowe and Cavalcaselle have
shown that Memlinc's work was well known and appreciated among Italian
connoisseurs of the time.

[166] I venture to retain this title, though the Official Catalogue
assures us that it is but "a pleasing illusion," as "the features and
the general form of head have little or no resemblance to the quite
authentic portraits of Andrea" at Florence, "or to that engraved by
Vasari, who was personally acquainted with the painter. If (adds the
catalogue) the object in the hands represents, as it well may, a
piece of modelling-clay, the subject of the portrait was probably a
Florentine sculptor." In that case we may perhaps save our "pleasing
illusion" by supposing that Andrea interpreted the expression of a
fellow-artist by his own experience. But the case is by no means clear.
The earlier portrait in the Uffizi is not very unlike ours. In the
later some resemblance remains, though the face has coarsened. But this
is a matter on which every one must see resemblances or otherwise for
himself. (Reproductions will be found in the monograph on the painter
in the "Great Masters" series. The author, H. Guinness, considers the
authenticity of our portrait to be "beyond question," p. 23).

[167] Lucrezia's character has, however, been whitewashed of late
years: see _Gazette des Beaux Arts_, December 1876 and three following
months.

[168] This delightful picture, which has hitherto been ascribed to
Bellini himself, is now (1898) attributed in the official catalogue to
Catena (see 234).

[169] "The pet portrait of the lecturer was Moroni's 'Tailor.' Luckily
the original painting was in the National Gallery, and all interested
could judge for themselves whether, for simplicity, expression,
drawing, colour, and above all, soul, the portrait had a rival" (Report
of a lecture on "Portraiture" by Mr. Harry Furniss).

[170] In a red-figured vase in the British Museum (E 477 in the Third
Vase Room) there is a picture of this same subject. "The drawing,"
says Miss Harrison, "is somewhat coarse, and the painter seems to
be struggling with a subject that is expressively too much for him.
Procris sinks in death in an odd, ill-drawn attitude; her soul escapes
in the form of a bird, Kephalos smites his head in despair, the dog
Lailaps watches concerned. Erechtheus, the old king-father, is at hand
to sympathise; the curt archaic symbolism of attitude, the utterance
of mere gesture, is at fault here. The story was pregnant with modern
suggestion. It had to wait, so to speak, for the delicate imagination
of the Renaissance painter, Piero di Cosimo, to make us feel the
contrast between the dead woman, over-sentient, passion-slain, and the
shaggy faun, kindly perplexed, and the dumb, faithful dog; between the
soft slack peace of the woodland and the terrible tension of humanity"
(_Magazine of Art_, 1894, p. 61).

[171] Formerly ascribed to Margaret van Eyck.

[172] Formerly ascribed to Van der Goes.

[173]

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

  WORDSWORTH.


[174] The existence of this supposed younger Foppa, and the date
1492 (rather than 1502) must be considered doubtful in view of the
researches published by C. J. Ffoulkes in the _Athenæum_, February 15,
1902.

[175] "Velazquez has left a great number of striking pictures, each
containing a single figure. The Count de Pourtalès, in the collection
at Paris (from which this picture was bought in 1865), has an
excellent specimen of one of these studies, called 'The Dead Orlando'"
(Stirling's _Annals of the Artists of Spain_, 1848, p. 680). Other
authorities ascribe the picture to Valdes Leal (see 1291).

[176] Among other points we may notice the beautiful landscape;
"Nothing can be more perfect in pictorial effect than the old wall, the
distant roofs, the gleams of light on water, and the exquisite tones of
gray" (Gilbert's _Landscape in Art_, p. 263).

[177] It may be interesting to note what Raphael's method actually was.
He writes to Count Baldassare Castiglione, in a complimentary way:
"To paint a beautiful woman, I must see several, with this condition,
that your lordship be near me to select the loveliest. But there being
a dearth both of good judges and of beautiful women, I make use of a
certain idea that comes into my mind. Whether with benefit to art, I
know not; but I strive to form such an ideal in my mind."

[178] Readers of Ruskin will remember the high praise accorded to
Richter's illustrations of the Lord's Prayer and other engravings in
_The Elements of Drawing_.

[179] See their _Vittore Carpaccio et la Confrérie de Sainte Ursule_,
pp. 9-10, and _Vittore Carpaccio, Le Vite e le Opere_.

[180] Raphael was born in 1483. In 1491 his mother died.

[181] "Pisano's dragon is a pleasant-looking animal, wild-boar faced,
and smilingly showing his fangs, as he crouches by the eminently
gentlemanly St. George in the silver-plated and gilt armour; and a
word in passing must be said for the lovely hog, with a broad grin
overspreading his countenance, who accompanies the placid St. Anthony.
Is not St. George, in the broad Tuscan hat, the personification of John
Inglesant as _il Cavaliere di San Giorgio_?" (S. Beale in _Good Words_,
July 1895).

[182] "A splendid example of the naïve humour of the painter. There
is the father, somewhat sly, and the eldest son resembling him but
less 'cute. The next head is that of a jolly, sandy-haired fellow.
Then comes the reprobate, with a sensual upper lip, the only one
in the family; all the others have thin, long slit mouths, as well
as long straight noses. Behind, are the poor relations. We see the
good, hard-working cousin, who has found life too much for him; the
self-approving fellow, who thanks God he is not as other men are;
and above him the man who, if he has been saved from committing some
terrible crime, certainly owes his exemption to God's mercy, not, we
may be sure, to his own strength of will. On the other side are the
ladies of the family. The severe mamma, with flat brow, a veritable
Mrs. Grundy. The daughter, evidently a worldling by the jewelled band
round her forehead, is praying, because it is the business of the
moment. The easy-going maiden above her has taken to religious life
because it affords her a certain amount of distinction, with a little
soul-saving. Behind, is the old great-aunt, a really pious soul, who
has adopted conventual life from a devout conviction that she could
live better and do more good as a member of a community than dwelling
in the world. Above, are two fat-faced children, both more or less
bored; and behind them is another, fascinated by the jewels of her
kinswomen" (S. Beale in _Good Words_, July 1895).

[183] See Richter's _Italian Art in the National Gallery_, p. 44,
where a résumé of recent criticism and a facsimile of the Albertina
drawing will be found. Signor Frizzoni, cited with approval by
Richter, says: "Although the composition seems to me not in the
least attractive, nor even successful (and for this very reason the
picture might have been left unfinished), yet I cannot but consider
it to be an original, and, moreover, a specially interesting one,
and worthy of being looked at closely by those who wish to study
the master in the numerous characteristic features of his style.
In my opinion it is an early work by him; and this becomes evident
especially from the purity and delicacy in the features of one of the
Maries, standing on the right side, in which, if I am not mistaken,
the pure types of his first master, Domenico Ghirlandaio, are much
more perceptible than Buonarroti's own grand style. In other parts,
however, the sculpturesque manner of modelling peculiar to him is
not less noticeable--in the muscles, sturdy as usual, and in the
prominent rendering of the corpse." Symonds, on the other hand, has
no hesitation in rejecting the picture. "It is," he says, "painful to
believe that at any period of his life Michelangelo could have produced
a composition so discordant, so unsatisfactory in some anatomical
details, so feelingless and ugly. It bears indubitable traces of his
influence; that is apparent in the figure of the dead Christ. But this
colossal nude, with the massive chest and attenuated legs, reminds us
of his manner in old age; whereas the rest of the picture shows no
trace of that manner. I am inclined to think that the Entombment was
the production of a second-rate craftsman, working upon some design
made by Michelangelo at the advanced period when the Passion of our
Lord occupied his thoughts in Rome. Even so, the spirit of the drawing
must have been imperfectly assimilated; and, what is more puzzling, the
composition does not recall the style of Michelangelo's old age. The
colouring, so far as we can understand it, rather suggests Pontormo"
(_The Life of Michelangelo_, 1893, i. 68). Sir Edward Poynter, on the
other hand, will hear of no doubt: "There is," he says, "no doubt
whatever that this picture is the work of the great master. The
originality of the composition, the magnificent dignity of the poses,
the perfection of the modelling, combined with the profound knowledge
and subtle play of the anatomical forms where the work is complete,
and the exquisite beauty of the drapery, all stamp it as a work which,
if completed, would have been one of the masterpieces of the world,
and possible to no one but the great master of design. It is thought
desirable to insist on the grand qualities of this picture, because it
has been ascribed to Bandinelli, a bombastic sculptor, quite incapable
either of the refinement or of the subtle feeling for nature which
is evident in all the finished portions of this work" (_The National
Gallery_, i. 72).

[184] According to one of the dramatic critics in the daily press, Sir
Henry Irving in playing _Richelieu_ was made up to resemble closely
this picture; and (added the critic) the actor brought out the three
sides of Richelieu's character here depicted. "At times we see him as
the pitiless, unscrupulous man who forced himself from obscurity to a
power greater than his monarch's; at others we see the fine courteous
gentleman who patronised literature, founded the French Academy, and
collaborated in half a dozen bad plays; and there is also not a little
of the paltry, small-minded tyrant of whom Corneille said--

    Il m'a trop fait de bien pour en dire du mal.
    Il m'a trop fait de mal pour en dire du bien."


[185] See Morelli's _German Galleries_, p. 393. He dismisses the idea
of an original Vicentine School as one which "cannot be entertained at
all."

[186] "By Gentile Bellini, and not by Giovanni, as stated in the
Catalogue. The latter artist drew the ear of a different shape than did
his brother Gentile" (Morelli: _German Galleries_, p. 10 _n._). If by
Gentile, the signature is forged or altered.

[187] "I subjoin," writes the poet to his mother (December 23, 1880),
"a sonnet I have done on the Michelangelo in the National Gallery. In
this picture the Virgin is withdrawing from the child the book which
contains the prophecy of his sufferings--I suppose that of Isaiah. The
idea is a most beautiful one; and behind the group are angels perusing
a scroll. Shields was helpful to me in the interpretation of this"
(_Letters and Memoir_, ii. 365).

[188] Signed Joannes Bellini, but by some critics ascribed to Gentile
Bellini. See Frizzoni's _Arte Italiana del Rinascimento_, p. 314.

[189] To the same effect, Sir Edward Poynter: "The painting of the
green forest is the most perfectly beautiful piece of workmanship that
ever was put into a picture" (_Lectures on Art_, p. 128).

[190] But see note on No. 53.

[191] "Unfortunately, Hobbema has allowed some one, apparently
Wyntrank, to put a few ducks into the foreground. They are not wanted,
and the manipulation required to fit them in has caused the lower
part of the picture to darken disagreeably" (Armstrong: _Notes on the
National Gallery_, p. 38).

[192] Ruskin speaks of him as an artist "first-rate in an inferior
line" (_On the Old Road_, i. 558).

[193] Some of Mr. Gladstone's purchases for the National Gallery are
noticed in the introduction to Appendix II. The "Ansidei Madonna" was
also purchased by a special vote when he was in power. The Gallery owes
the present picture to Mr. Disraeli's taste. "I happened," says Sir
William Fraser in his _Disraeli and his Day_, "to be at the saleroom
in King Street: the crowd was considerable. A picture was on the easel
for sale; I did not know the name of the painter: the subject, 'The
Nativity,' of the pre-Raphaelite school. I was so charmed with it that
I bid up to two thousand pounds. I then felt that I could not trust my
judgment further: that I might be mistaken: and that the picture might
be 'run up' for trade purposes. It was bought for £2415. A few days
afterwards I met Mr. C. Having noticed him in the crowd, I said, 'Do
you happen to know who bought that "Francesca"?' 'I did. Disraeli told
me to buy it for the National Gallery.'"

[194] The fondness of the Old Masters for the brute creation is
illustrated in this picture, as in so many others. The ox is evidently
fascinated by the music; the ass is disturbed and brays fiercely. Note
also the goldfinch upon the roof.

[195] "The painter must, for the present, remain as an unknown Umbrian,
almost equally influenced by Pinturicchio and Signorelli, and with
peculiar qualities of simple grace and romance, which give his work an
extremely individual character" (Cruttwell's _Signorelli_, p. 117).

[196] English readers will find some account, with occasional
translations, of Poliziano's poem in Symonds's _Sketches and Studies in
Italy and Greece_, ii. 334, and _Renaissance_, iv. 350. Symonds, had
already remarked that much of the poem is like a picture of Botticelli.
The same painter's "Birth of Venus" may have been suggested by stanza
99 of Poliziano, though the peculiar sentiment of that famous picture
is the painter's own. See also under 916.

[197] "We venture to ask," says Dr. Richter, "is this really an Italian
picture?" (_Italian Art in the National Gallery_, p. 87).

[198] The figures are by Tiepolo (see under 1192).

[199] Visitors who have been to Venice will remember that "Carpaccio
trusts for the chief splendour of any _festa_ in cities to the patterns
of the draperies hung out of windows" (_Bible of Amiens_, p. 3).

[200] Or, according to Mr. Berenson, of Alvise Vivarini and Lotto (see
his _Lorenzo Lotto_, pp. 113, 304).

[201] It was exhibited at the "Old Masters" exhibition in 1873 as a
Raphael. Mr. Ruskin, who had noticed it there, wrote to Mr. Fairfax
Murray, "Please look at the Raphael, and tell me how far the colour may
have changed on St. John's shoulder and in Judas' dress, and how far
the fantastic shot silks of this last are absolutely as they were."

[202] It is a repetition with but slight variations of the Medici
picture in the Uffizi.

[203] "The early Italian masters felt themselves so indebted to, and
formed by, the master-craftsman who had mainly disciplined their
fingers, whether in work on gold or marble, that they practically
considered him their father, and took _his_ name rather than their
own; so that most of the great Italian workmen are now known, not by
their own names, but by those of their masters (or of their native
towns or villages--these being recognised as masters also), the master
being himself often entirely forgotten by the public, and eclipsed by
his pupil; but immortal _in_ his pupil, and named in his name.... All
which I beg you to take to heart and meditate on concerning Mastership
and Pupilage" (_Fors Clavigera_, 1872, xxii. 3, 4). Vasari's story may
be true, says Dr. Richter, "even though no contemporary record of a
goldsmith called Botticello has been found. We know, however, that he
had a brother, Giovanni Battista, a carpenter and frame-maker of some
repute, nicknamed _Botticegli_, _i.e._ 'Little Barrel'; this nickname
may have been inherited by the younger brother" (_Lectures on the
National Gallery_, p. 48).

[204] See Richter's _Lectures on the National Gallery_ for the list, p.
46.

[205] Reference may be made also to Mr. Swinburne's "Notes on Designs
of the Old Masters at Florence" (first published in the _Fortnightly
Review_ for July 1868), in which he speaks of "the faint and almost
painful grace which gives a distinct value and curious charm to all
the works of Botticelli." At an auction in 1867 D. G. Rossetti picked
up a Botticelli for £20. "If he had not something to do," writes his
brother, "with the vogue which soon afterwards began to attach to that
fascinating master, I am under a misapprehension." Pater's essay first
appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_ of August 1870. Ruskin's first
mention of Botticelli was in a lecture delivered at Oxford during the
Lent Term, 1871. Carpaccio had been proclaimed in a lecture of the
preceding year, and it became a standing joke among the profane to ask
who was Ruskin's last "greatest painter." It was in answer thereto that
Mr. Bourdillon wrote:

    To us this star or that seems bright,
    And oft some headlong meteor's flight
    Holds for awhile our raptured sight.
    But he discerns each noble star;
    The least is only the most far,
    Whose worlds, may be, the mightiest are.


[206] "The dress appears to have been originally crimson or pink. If
so, it has faded to so agreeable a tone that one could hardly wish it
otherwise" (Poynter).

[207] The visitor should contrast Canaletto's painting of still water
with Turner's (see under 535).

[208] "Upon asking how he had been taught the art of a _cognoscento_
so very suddenly, he assured me that nothing was more easy. The whole
secret consisted in a strict adherence to two rules: the one, always
to observe that the picture might have been better if the painter had
taken more pains; and the other to praise the works of Pietro Perugino"
(_Vicar of Wakefield_, ch. xx.).

[209] The author of the catalogue of the Burlington Fine Arts Club's
Exhibition of 1898 maintains that the two side panels are later in date
than the central panel, and have no connection with it (p. xxxvii.).

[210] Sir Walter Armstrong attributes No. 1079 to David. "The National
Gallery possesses one of the best of David's authenticated works
(1045), and a comparison between it and the "Adoration of the Magi,"
numbered 1079, goes far to prove them to be by one hand. Compare, for
instance, the figure of the beggar in the one picture with that of St.
Joseph in shadow behind the Virgin, in the other. And the evidence of
style is confirmed by a curious discovery that I happened to make one
bright day, when the glass was off the latter picture. Low down in the
left-hand corner the word OUVVATER is written in a way that precludes
the notion of forgery, for it has been scratched with, perhaps, the
butt end of a brush, while the paint was still wet, so that the red
under-painting shows through the letters. David was born at Ouwater, or
Oudewater, about 1450, and did not migrate to Bruges till 1484" (_Notes
on the National Gallery_, p. 29).

[211] See Morley's _Diderot_, ii. 62. "Yet he cannot refuse to concede
about one of Boucher's pictures that after all he would be glad to
possess it. Every time you saw it, he says, you would find fault
with it, yet you would go on looking at it. This is perhaps what the
severest modern amateur, as he strolls carelessly through the French
school at his leisure, would not in his heart care to deny."

[212] Ruskin speaks under the head of typical beauty (of beauty, that
is, as typical of divine attributes) of the absolute necessity in
pictures for some suggestion of infinity. "Escape, Hope, Infinity, by
whatever conventionalism sought, the device is the same in all, the
instinct constant" (_Modern Painters_, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. v.
§§ 7, 8).

[213] Ruskin finds Leonardo's landscape unconvincing. "In realisation
of detail he verges on the ornamental; in his rock outlines he has all
the deficiencies and little of the feeling of the earlier men. The
rocks are grotesque without being ideal, and extraordinary without
being impressive." "The forms of rock in Leonardo's celebrated 'Vierge
aux Rochers' are literally no better than those on a china plate"
(_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 13; Edinburgh
_Lectures on Architecture and Painting_, p. 157). A high authority
on the Alpine region, Mr. Douglas Freshfield, has suggested that the
originals of Leonardo's backgrounds are to be found among the mountains
between Val Sassina and the Lago di Lecco: "The last spurs of the Alps
are here singularly picturesque. The bold forms of the Corno di Canzo
and Monte Baro break down to display the shining pools of the Laghi
di Pusiano and d' Annone. Hither Leonardo may have come, and looking
across the narrow lake or from beside some smaller pool or stream at
the stiff upright rocks of the Grigna and the Resegone, have conceived
the strange backgrounds with which we are all familiar" (_Italian
Alps_, 1875, p. 126). Mr. Freshfield's suggestion is borne out by
Leonardo's own topographical notes, since published. He had visited the
district and specially remarks upon its fantastic rocks.

[214] When in the Hamilton Collection, this picture was ascribed to
Giorgione. Some critics strongly dispute the ascription (see, _e.g._,
Richter's _Italian Art in the National Gallery_, p. 87), others accept
it (see, _e.g._, an article in the _Times_, July 26, 1882). Sir
Edward Poynter says: "The qualities of colour and painting in this
picture so closely resemble those of the famous 'Fête Champêtre' by
Giorgione in the Louvre, that it is difficult not to believe that the
two pictures are by the same hand, and that, if the Louvre picture is
rightly named, the original attribution to Giorgione may be correct"
(_National Gallery_, i. 24). Mr. Herbert Cook is of the same opinion:
"The figures, with their compactly built and rounded limbs, are such as
Giorgione loved to model, the sweep of draperies and the splendid line
indicate a consummate master, the idyllic landscape is just such as we
see in the Louvre picture and elsewhere, the glow and splendour of the
whole reveal a master of tone and colouring" (_Giorgione_, p. 94). As
an illustration of the uncertainty of criticism it may be interesting
to append the observations on Sir E. Poynter's remarks made by a writer
in the _Daily Telegraph_ of Dec. 29, 1899: "In reality no two works
belonging to more or less the same period of Venetian art could be
more utterly different. The Hamilton Palace picture is a soulless and
second-rate production, dating a good many years later than the Louvre
idyll, wholly different from it in handling, and remarkable only for
its beautiful golden tone. The Louvre 'Fête Champêtre'--a late example
of the divine master--is one of the loveliest and most characteristic
pieces produced in the early prime of Venetian painting. Should the
'Venus and Adonis' be set down to Giorgione, the misrepresentation in
the National Gallery of a unique figure in art would be complete."

[215] By Mr. Berenson to "Amico di Sandro."

[216] "The figures are ill-proportioned and want expression and
character. They are more probably by a scholar or imitator" (Layard's
_Kugler_, vol. i. p. 289).

[217] Critics of the modern school assert that the picture was not
executed by Botticelli, even if it was designed by him; it bears,
they say, "no trace of his style" (see, _e.g._, Richter's _Lectures_
and Frizzoni's _Arte Italiana del Rinascimento_). Ruskin was on the
same side: "I hope you know Botticelli well enough," he wrote to Mr.
Fairfax Murray (February 14, 1873), "not to think you'll have to copy
stuff like that arms-akimbo thing. By the way, what have they all got,
like truncheons? They look like a lot of opera-directors." Dr. Uhlmann
in his work on Botticelli ascribes the picture to Botticini; Vasari,
he thinks, confused the two painters,--a theory for which there is
no sort of proof. There is only one work of Botticini which has been
identified with certainty. It is at Empoli, and was executed in 1490,
or fifteen years at least before this picture. Vasari's account is
precise, and is confirmed, as we have seen, by historical records. Very
convincing internal proofs are necessary to overthrow this external
evidence. Where are such proofs? The idea of the picture is entirely
in accordance with what we know of Botticelli. "The wonderful energy
of the angels and the boldness of the design attest his invention"
(Monkhouse's _In the National Gallery_, p. 64). The case in this sense
is very well put by Mr. Maurice Hewlett in the _Academy_ of January 9,
1892. He points out among other things that the picture agrees with the
general spirit of Botticelli's designs for the "Paradiso."

[218] Some account of the poem is given in an appendix to vol. v. of
Symonds's _Renaissance in Italy_.

[219] The traveller will find a convenient handbook to these frescoes
in Mr. J. L. Bevir's _Visitor's Guide to Orvieto_.

[220] It came from the Hamilton sale (1882), and was bought for the
small price of £157:10s.

[221] Owing to the similarity of initials IVO the picture was ascribed
by its former owner to Isaac van Ostade, who, however, died in 1649.

[222] Materials for such comparison--which is not the least interesting
of the many lines of study offered by a collection of pictures--are
provided in Mrs. Jameson's books, or may be formed still better by
every student for himself by a collection of photographs. A capital
series of articles by Mr. Grant Allen in the _Pall Mall Magazine_ of
1895 traced, in a few of the most popular subjects, the process of
"Evolution in Early Italian Art."

[223] Visitors to Venice will remember a beautiful use of this
arrangement on the southern side of the Rialto, the Dove forming the
keystone of the arch.

[224] A piece of paper of the last century, glued to the back of this
panel, contains a memorandum in now faded ink, in the handwriting of
the great-grandfather of Signor G. Molfini (from whom the picture
was bought in Genoa in 1883), to the following effect:--"Antonello
of Messina, a city of Sicily, a famous painter.... And this is his
portrait, painted by himself, as was to be seen by an inscription below
it which I, in order to reduce it (_i.e._ the picture) to a better
shape, sawed away." Some traces of further writing are now illegible.

[225] Ford Madox Brown, who was not one to be impressed by any
authority, has some very scathing remarks on this picture: "Bad in
colour, in drawing, in grouping, and in expression, with the figure of
Jesus falling on its nose, this work seems to shine solely by reason of
the varnish with which it has recently been so polished up" (_Magazine
of Art_, 1890, p. 135).

[226] He enumerates them in an official return of his property:
"Further, I have a monkey, moreover, a raven which can talk, and which
I keep by me in order that he may teach from his cage a theological
jackass also to speak. Item: an owl to frighten the witches, two
peacocks, two dogs, a sparrow-hawk, and other birds of prey, six fowls,
eighteen chickens, two moor-fowl, and many other birds, to name all of
which would only cause confusion."

[227] According to Nonius Marcellus: "By old Roman law, brides used to
bring three _asses_ (pennies), and to give one, which they held in the
hand, to the bridegroom, as though to purchase him; to place another,
which they held in the foot, on the hearth of the family Lares; and to
put the third in their pocket and rattle it at the next cross-road."

[228] See, however, for some deductions afterwards made from this
estimate, _ibid._ vol. iv. pt. v. ch. iii. §§ 6, 7.

[229] Elsewhere Ruskin makes some exception in favour of Ary Scheffer:
"Though one of the heads of the Mud sentiment school, he does
_draw_ and _feel_ very beautifully and deeply" (_Letters on Art and
Literature_, p. 37).

[230] It was placed in their chapel in the church of S. Lorenzo in that
city. There it remained till 1764, when it was bought for the Duke of
Marlborough, and a copy replaced the original in the chapel.

[231] This picture and Van Dyck's "Charles the First" (1172) were
bought in 1884 from the Duke of Marlborough for £87,500. Sir F. Burton,
the Director of the National Gallery, had valued them at £115,500 and
£31,500 severally. I remember once hearing Mr. Gladstone refer to this
matter. His economic conscience seemed to give him some qualms on the
score of the unprecedented price. But he took comfort in the fact
that, large as was the price actually paid, the price asked by the
owner, as also the valuation of the Director, was very much larger.
"At any rate," he said with a smile, "I saved the taxpayers £45,000
on this Raphael, by not listening to the advice of the Director of
the Gallery." The purchase had been pressed upon the Government by
all sorts and conditions of men. The Royal Academy memorialised Mr.
Gladstone, and pleaded especially for the Raphael--"a work produced in
that happy period in which the reverent purity and the serene grace
of the master's earliest work are already mellowing into the fuller
dignity of his middle style." The Trustees of the National Gallery
declared that the purchase would at once raise the Collection to a
rank second to none, and superior to most, of the great Continental
Galleries; whilst a memorial from members of Parliament of all parties,
after referring to the Raphael as the finest in point of colouring
that ever came from his hand, assured Mr. Gladstone that "their
constituents and the whole nation will approve and applaud" a departure
from "the hard line of severe economy." It appears from _The Life and
Correspondence of Mr. Childers_ (ii. 163), who was Chancellor of the
Exchequer at the time, that the purchase was first suggested by Queen
Victoria.

[232] Sir Edward Poynter. The luminous quality of the picture conquered
Mr. Ruskin. After one of his last visits to the National Gallery, he
said to me: "The new Raphael is certainly lovely--quite the loveliest
Raphael in the world. The 'San Sisto' is dark and brown beside it."

[233] In this matter of the open sky also the "Ansidei Madonna" is
curiously transitional. "Raphael," says Ruskin (_ibid._ § 10), "in
his fall, betrayed the faith he had received from his father and
his master, and substituted for the radiant sky of the Madonna del
Cardellino, the chamber-wall of the Madonna della Sediola, and the
brown wainscot of the Baldacchino." Here we have both--the Baldacchino
and the open sky behind.

[234] Mr. Monkhouse suggests alternative explanations. Who is the
figure on the throne? "Is he meant for some intellectual Dives,
learning too late that happiness exists not in luxury or knowledge? Is
he the poet, musing in sadness and mental solitude on the mysteries of
life, who cannot taste of its fruit or listen to its music, unconscious
of the brute forces symbolised by the panther, and the vanity of human
pride imaged by the peacock on the dead branch; or is he a philosopher
imparting wisdom to the young? What matter, the picture charms like
nature, because we cannot fathom it" (_In the National Gallery_, p.
234). In the case of Giorgione's frescoes at Venice, Vasari frankly
"gave it up": "I, for my part, have never been able to understand what
they mean, nor, with all the inquiries that I have made, could I ever
find any one who did understand, or could explain them to me." But the
theory that the subject in Renaissance pictures meant nothing--that
details were treated from a purely pictorial point of view--is, as Dr.
Richter has well observed, more convenient than correct. The clue to
many of these unknown subjects is to be found in classical or Italian
literature. Bellini's allegorical compositions have recently been thus
interpreted. Titian's so-called "Sacred and Profane Love" has been
identified by Herr Franz Wickhoff as an illustration of the story of
Medea as told in the seventh book of the _Argonautica_ of Valerius
Flaccus, and the same author has also found the key to several works
ascribed to Giorgione.

[235] Dr. Richter, who found these pictures in a Veronese palace,
points out that the architecture in the background represents the old
tower of the castle of Mantua (_Art Journal_, Feb. 1895). It has,
however, been urged amongst other objections that the eagle on the
banners belongs to neither of the two houses. Perhaps, therefore, the
subject of the pictures is purely imaginary or borrowed from some
romance of the time.

[236] See note on No. 591.

[237] One portrait, however, was found by Mr. Petrie, not fixed over
the face of the mummy, but framed and glazed for hanging on the wall
of a tomb. The frame, now in the British Museum, is very like what is
called an "Oxford frame."

[238] Two other members of the family are known as painters--Ambrosius,
brother of the younger Hans; and Sigmund, brother of the elder. A
portrait ascribed to the latter is in our Gallery, No. 722.

[239] The picture is painted on ten boards joined vertically; and it is
interesting to speculate how far the composition may have been directed
by the necessity of avoiding any joint in the faces.

[240] _Cf._ what Ruskin says of "the glorious severity" of Holbein's
portraits (_Modern Painters_, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. 1. ch. xiv. § 19).

[241] The contrast between the picture as it was before being cleaned
and as it is now is very great. The accessories have come out in
astonishing clearness, and the crucifix in the left-hand corner has
been unveiled. The dingy green of the curtain background has given
place to a rich damask, and the gown of the younger man--which Wornum
described as "brownish green"--is now seen to be not green at all. Mr.
Dyer, to whose art this successful restoration was due, removed the
obscuring dirt and varnish entirely by manual friction.

[242] Several pages would be required to give a _résumé_ of all the
theories propounded, and of all the _pros_ and _cons_ in each case.
An account of the principal theories was given in the fourth edition
of this Handbook, and the story forms an entertaining chapter in
the curiosities of criticism. The most elaborately sustained of the
theories is that which identifies the "ambassadors" with the Counts
Palatine Otto Henry and his brother Philip (see the monograph on the
picture by W. F. Dickes).

[243] The following is the text of the document:--

      Remarques sur le suject d'un tableau excellent des Srs.
      d'Inteville Polizy, et de George de Selve.[244]

      En ce tableau est representé au naturel Messire Jean de D
      Intevile chevalier sieur de Polizy près de Bar-sur-seyne Bailly
      de Troyes, qui fut Ambassadeur en Angleterre pour le Roy
      François premier ez années 1532 & 1533 & de puis Gouverneur
      de Monsieur Charles de France second filz diceluy Roy, le
      quel Charles mourut a forest monstier en l'an 1545, & le dict
      sr. de D Intevile en l'an 1555, sepulturé en l'eglise du dict
      Polizy. Est aussi representé audict tableau Messire George de
      Selve Evesque de Lavaur personnage de grandes lettres & fort
      vertueux, & qui fut Ambassadeur pres de L Empereur Charles
      cinquiesme, le diet Evesque Filz de Messire Jean de Selve
      premier president au parlement de Paris, iceluy sr. Evesque
      decedé en l'an 1541 ayant des la susdicte année 1532 ou 1533
      passé en Angleterre par permission du Roy pour visiter le
      susdict sieur de D Intevile son intime amy & de toute sa
      famile, & eux deux ayantz rencontrez en Angleterre un excellent
      peinctre holandois, l'employèrent pour faire iceluy tableau qui
      a esté soigneusement conservé au mesme lieu de Polizy iusques
      en l'an 1653.


[244] Evesque de Lavour (_sic_) contenant leurs emplois, et tems de
leur deceds.

[245] The words in the choir-book are thus identified by Mr. Eastlake
(see a very interesting letter to the _Times_, 17th August 1891).

On the left-hand page:--

      Kom Heiliger Geyst herzegott erfüll mit deiner gnaden und (?)
      deiner gleubge hertz mut un sin dein brustig lib entzüd in ihn.

      O herz durch deines lichtes glast (?) züdem glaube versamlet
      hast das volck aller welt zunge ...(?) dir herzu lob gesungen
      ... gesungen ...

On the right-hand page:--

    Mensch wiltu (?) leben seliguch und bei Gott blibene
    Solch (?) halten die zehen gebot die uns gebeut unser Gott ...
      unser ...

"It seems to have been assumed," adds Mr. Eastlake, "that the
choir-book is a Protestant one, and therefore inconsistent with the
presence of the silver crucifix recently revealed in the left-hand
upper corner of the picture. But it is evident that the hymn or anthem
above mentioned is merely a paraphrase of the well-known 'Veni Sancte
Spiritus,' which for ages past has appeared in the Roman Catholic
breviary for use on Whit Sunday or the Feast of Pentecost, and still
survives in the Anglican Ordination Service." The music in the book
has been identified by Mr. W. B. Squire, of the British Museum, as the
counterpoint sung by the tenor in Johann Walther's setting for the
Wittenberg hymn-book of 1524. Mr. Squire adds his opinion that Holbein
chose those compositions for copying in the picture, "on account of
the bearing which the words had upon either the individuals portrayed,
or some incident connected with them, and intended to be commemorated"
(Letter to the _Times_, 14th November 1891). Miss Hervey finds an
explanation in the fact that the Bishop of Lavaur was devoted to the
cause of religious re-union between the Roman Catholic and the Reformed
Churches. The doctrine expressed by the two hymns was common to all the
churches.

[246] For further particulars the reader is referred to _Holbein's
'Ambassadors': the Picture and the Men_, by Mary F. S. Hervey (1900).
Miss Hervey gives an interesting account of her identification of the
sitters, and many curious speculations as to the details of the picture.

[247] It has been suggested by some high authorities that the lower
portion of the picture was probably left to some pupil to finish; for
the Admiral's legs are very flabbily drawn. They look as if there
were no bone or muscle in them, but only sawdust or padding. Señor de
Bereute, in spite of the very definite history of the picture given by
Palomino, attributes the whole work not to Velazquez but to his pupil
and son-in-law, J. B. del Mazo (1308). If this be correct, Mazo was
another Velazquez. There is nothing in Mazo's known works to justify
such an estimate of his powers. "Mazo, still in his early youth, had
in 1634 married a daughter of Velazquez, and had only recently got a
subordinate place in Philip's court. It is hard to believe that he
could have painted this superb picture when only about 25 years of
age, or that Philip would have entrusted him with the portrait of a
favourite when he had beside him his trusty Court painter, Velazquez"
(_Quarterly Review_, April 1899, p. 521).

[248] "Congratulate me (he wrote to his old friend and colleague,
Sir H. A. Layard) on a real _trouvaille_. The picture I bought at
G. Bentinck's sale has come out splendidly, and is in first-rate
condition. Burton is greatly struck with it. It is a wonderful bit
of luck to have picked up so fine a picture from among so many of
the cognoscenti." No wonder that Sir William Gregory, who bought his
pictures so cheap, was aghast at the large and even fancy price which
the nation sometimes has to pay. "The cost of them," he writes of the
Longford pictures (Nos. 1314-1316) "makes me blush when I think of it."

[249] The composition, however, has been blamed on the ground that
the square picture on the wall interferes with the girl's head in a
very awkward manner. The Cupid represented in that picture is also
very clumsy. A correspondent replying to these criticisms writes:
"The composition depends not upon the rhythm of the lines, but upon
the arrangement of patches of colour, somewhat in the manner of the
Japanese. Dutch painters often represented inferior pictures upon
the walls of their interiors, perhaps as a kind of humorous contrast
to their own masterpieces. See, for instance, the daub in De Hooch's
picture in the National Gallery (No. 834)."

[250] By Mr. Berenson ascribed to "Amico di Sandro."

[251] "Hung on each side of the great Vandyck, on the east wall of
the principal Dutch and Flemish room, they have given the completing
touch to that collection of _chefs d'oeuvre_, and made it now beyond
question the finest wall of masterpieces of those schools in Europe"
(Sir Edward Poynter's speech at the Royal Academy Banquet, 1899).

[252] The purchase for the nation was at one time in jeopardy. Early in
1899 the two pictures were offered by Lord de Saumarez to the National
Gallery for the sum of £12,500. A special grant was obtained from Her
Majesty's Treasury for this sum on the condition that the Trustees
should forego the annual grant for 1899-1900, estimated at £5000.
Lord de Saumarez found, however, that he had no power to sell the
pictures without an order from the Court of Chancery, and having been
subsequently offered the sum of £15,000 for these two pictures, the
Court decided they could only be sold to the National Gallery for an
advance on the sum offered. The Trustees, therefore, offered the sum of
£15,050, for which the Court awarded them to the Trustees. Towards the
balance of the purchase money, amounting to £2550, two of the Trustees,
Mr. Alfred de Rothschild and Mr. Heseltine, liberally contributed £500
each, and the remainder, amounting to £1550, was paid out of the grant
for the year 1898-99.

[253] Mr. Roger Fry (in _The Pilot_, Jan. 5, 1901) attributes our
picture, which he calls "a distressing production," to "some journeyman
painter who treated Fra Bartolommeo's design in the spirit of the
earlier furniture painters, but without their charm and _naïveté_."

[254] "His early pictures have only a hint of personal expression.
Some of his Madonnas are still almost Byzantine in their hieratic
solemnity. It is possible to follow Giovanni Bellini's career almost
from year to year by the increase of personal expression in his figures
and landscapes" (Mary Logan: _Guide to the Italian Pictures at Hampton
Court_, p. 9).

[255] See Bernhard Berenson's _Lorenzo Lotto_, 1895, pp. 21-120.

[256] See Mr. Herbert Cook's _Giorgione_, pp. 68-74.

[257] That fine picture came from the Manfrini Palace at Venice; and
though by some called a "bad and late copy" (Mündler, _Beiträge zu B.'s
Cicerone_, 1870, p. 61) is by others highly praised. Thus Waagen, in
his _Treasures of Art in Great Britain_ (vol. iii. 1854, p. 19), in
describing the Cobham Hall pictures, says of the picture now in the
National Gallery that it "agrees essentially with the fine portrait in
the Manfrini collection at Venice. But the tone of the flesh is heavier
here, and the grey colour of the dress unites too much with the grey
ground, while in the Manfrini picture, the brown tones of the dress
stand out decidedly from it."

[258] See the _Second Annual Report of the National Art Collections
Fund_, 1906, pp. 35, 36. Until the matter was cleared up by the
researches of Señor de Beruete, summarised in that Report, it was
supposed that our picture was one of five mythologies painted by
Velazquez for the Gallery of Mirrors in the Alcazar of Madrid, two of
which perished in the great fire of 1734. Knowledge of this fire was
doubtless the origin of a suggestion that our picture also had been
damaged and repainted. There was correspondence on this subject, and
on others connected with the picture, in the _Times_ of November and
December 1905 and the early part of 1906.

[259] The intermediate processes by which the price of the picture rose
from £30,500 to £45,000 have not been disclosed. Towards the latter
sum, the largest contributions were--"An Englishman" £10,000; Lord
Michelham, £8000; and Messrs. Agnew, £5250.

[260] See pp. 75-78 of _The Barbizon School_, by D. C. Thomson, from
whose translation I borrow a few sentences.

[261] According to William Morris, most visitors to the Gallery are apt
to pass by some of its principal treasures. "If ordinary people go to
our National Gallery, the thing which they want to see is the Blenheim
Raphael, which, though well done, is a very dull picture to any one
not an artist. While, when Holbein shows them the Danish princess of
the sixteenth century yet living on the canvas ...; when Van Eyck
opens a window for them into Bruges of the fourteenth century; when
Botticelli shows them Heaven as it lived in the hearts of men before
theology was dead, these things produce no impression on them, not so
much even as to stimulate their curiosity and make them ask what 'tis
all about; because these things were done to be looked at, and to make
the eyes tell the mind tales of the past, the present, and the future"
(Mackail's _Life of William Morris_, ii. 273).

[262] The precise nature of the transaction was this:--Lady Carlisle
received in cash £40,000 and the Treasury paid the death-duties
(£2776). Of these sums, the National Gallery funds contributed £15,000;
the National Art-Collections' Fund, £10,000; and the Treasury £17,776
(see House of Commons Debate, February 28, 1912).




PICTURES ON LOAN


THE HOLY FAMILY.

  _B. Fungai_ (Sienese: about 1460-1516). _See 1331._

This picture, not yet numbered, is lent by the Victoria and Albert
(South Kensington) Museum. It is generally characteristic of Fungai,
but the figure of the Infant Christ is not pleasing.

_Lent by Mr. Pierpont Morgan._


THE MADONNA DI SANTI ANTONIO.

  _Raphael_ (Urbino: 1483-1520). _See 1171._

"In the same city (says Vasari)--[the city of Perugia, for which also
the Ansidei Madonna was painted]--Raphael was commissioned to paint a
picture of Our Lady by the nuns of Sant' Antonio of Padua; the Infant
Christ is in the lap of the Virgin and is fully clothed, as it pleased
those simple and pious ladies that he should be; on each side of Our
Lady are figures of saints, San Pietro, namely, with San Paolo, Santa
Cecilia, and Santa Catarina. To these two holy virgins the master has
given the most lovely features and the most graceful attitudes; he has
also adorned them with the most fanciful and varied head-dresses that
could be imagined--a very unusual thing at that time. In a lunette
above this picture he painted a figure of the Almighty Father, which is
extremely fine, and on the predella are three scenes from the history
of Christ, in very small figures.... The whole work is without doubt
very admirable; it is full of devout feeling, and is held in the utmost
veneration by the nuns for whom it was painted. It is very highly
commended by all painters likewise."

The small scenes which formed the predella have been dispersed;[263]
for the rest, the picture thus described by Vasari is before us. Vasari
dates the work 1505, but it is now commonly ascribed to the years
1507-8, after Raphael had experienced the influence of Fra Bartolommeo;
it would thus be a little later than the Ansidei Madonna.

The history of the picture is long and eventful. In 1677 the nuns
obtained permission to sell it, "to pay their debts and because the
surface was in some parts flaking away." The central panel and the
lunette (forming the picture as it now is) were bought by Antonio
Bigazzini, a nobleman of Perugia, for a sum of about £500. Shortly
afterwards, the picture passed into the hands of the great Colonna
family at Rome, and it is often called "The Colonna Raphael." The
fortunes of the picture now became part of those of modern Italian
history. In the last century, the picture had been bought by Francis
II., King of Naples. It was a great favourite of his, and was always
kept in his bedroom in the Royal Palace. When the revolution of 1860
came, and the king was driven out of Naples, the Raphael accompanied
him on his wanderings, and the king succeeded in conveying it in
safety to the fortress of Gaeta. When Gaeta fell in 1861, and the
king went into exile, he again took the picture with him, and it was
safely transported to Spain. The king was accompanied in his flight
by the financier and factotum, formerly Spanish Minister at Naples,
upon whom he had conferred the title of Duke of Ripalda. To him the
king in some way pledged the picture, and for a time it became known
as the Ripalda Raphael. Its history next becomes connected with the
secular jealousies of England and France. In 1867 Sir J. C. Robinson
saw the picture at Madrid, and received a hint that it might possibly
be for sale. Sir William Boxall, the Director of our Gallery, went to
inspect the picture, which was then in fine condition; and Disraeli
authorised the trustees to buy it. Negotiations were commenced on the
basis of £20,000; but the Duke of Ripalda was a friend of the Empress
Eugénie, and the knowledge that England was in the market inspired a
counter-bid of £40,000 from France. The outbreak of the Prussian War
caused a hitch in the negotiations; and the picture, which had been
sent to Paris, underwent rigorous "restoration." The Colonna Raphael,
wrote Sir William Gregory (May 1870), "was, a few months ago, one of
the most perfect and important pictures of that master. In an evil
moment it had been submitted to the cleaner, and a piteous spectacle
it now is in the eyes of gods and men. It is said that on the old
frame being removed, the picture fell to the ground in three pieces.
This is confirmed by the extraordinary winking appearance of the eye
of one of the female saints, through which unfortunately one of the
cracks runs, and which therefore had to be repainted by a modern hand."
Ruskin, perhaps unaware of these repaintings or believing that they
could be removed, strongly urged the acquisition of the picture for the
nation (_Works_, xxii. 140, xxxiv. 512). But the authorities would not
entertain the idea, and the picture, refused both by the Louvre and by
the National Gallery, returned, unpurchased and unhonoured, into the
hands of the Duke. In 1886 it was lent to the South Kensington Museum
and there it remained for several years, until Mr. Martin Colnaghi
bought it from the representatives of the late King of Naples. The
Parisian repaintings were removed, and the picture was restored to much
of its pristine beauty. Ultimately it passed into the possession of Mr.
Pierpont Morgan (at the price, it is said, of £100,000), and by him it
is for the present lent to the National Gallery.


THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.

  _Unknown_ (Spanish: end of 15th century).

Signed "Lo Fil de Mestre Rodrigo." Lent by the Victoria and Albert
Museum.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[263] In addition to the "three scenes" mentioned by Vasari there
were two single figures, of St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua
respectively: these are in the Dulwich Gallery.




COPIES FROM THE OLD MASTERS


I.--_VELAZQUEZ_

One collection is of fifty-nine copies in oil-colour, on a reduced
scale, of pictures by Velazquez in the Prado Gallery, at Madrid,
presented by Lord Savile. They were painted by Mr. Chidley Molony, an
English gentleman who first went to Spain as an officer in the army
of General Evans, and subsequently settled at Madrid, where he was a
great favourite and well known, especially to the English Colony. The
following are the subjects of these copies:--

   1. The Adoration of the Magi.
   2. The Crucifixion.
   3. The Coronation of the Virgin.
   4. St. Anthony visiting St. Pablo.
   5. A Group of Rustics drinking (the picture known as "Los
      Borrachos").
   6. The Forge of Vulcan.
   7. The Surrender of Breda (the picture known as "Las Lanzas").
   8. The Tapestry Fabric of St. Isabel at Madrid (the picture known
      as "Las Hilanderas").
   9. Velazquez in his painting room, with various members of the
      Royal Family and their Attendants (the picture known as
      "Las Meninas").
  10. "Mercury and Argus."
  11. Equestrian Portrait of King Philip III.
  12. Equestrian Portrait of Queen Margarita de Austria (wife of
      Philip III.).
  13. Equestrian Portrait of King Philip IV.
  14. Equestrian Portrait of Queen Isabel de Borbon (first wife of
      Philip IV.).
  15. Equestrian Portrait of Prince Baltasar Carlos, as a child.
  16. Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Olivares.
  17. Portrait of Philip IV. as a young man, in court dress.
  18. Portrait of the Infanta of Spain, Doña Maria, Queen of Hungary
      (sister of Philip IV.).
  19. Portrait of the Infante, Don Carlos, second son of Philip III., in
      court dress.
  20. Portrait of King Philip IV. in hunting dress.
  21. Portrait of the Infante, Don Fernando de Austria (brother of
      Philip IV.), in hunting dress.
  22. Portrait of Prince Baltasar Carlos, at the age of six, in
      hunting dress.
  23. Portrait of King Philip IV., at the age of fifty (?), clad in half
      armour.
  24. Portrait of Doña Mariana de Austria (second wife of Philip IV.).
  25. King Philip IV. kneeling at prayer.
  26. Queen Mariana de Austria, second wife of Philip IV., kneeling at
      prayer.
  27. Portrait of Prince Baltasar Carlos, son of Philip IV., at the age of
      fourteen, in court dress.
  28. Portrait of the Infanta, Maria Teresa de Austria, daughter of
      Philip IV. and afterwards Queen of France.
  29. Portrait (bust length) of the Cordovan poet, Don Louis de Góngora
      y Argote.
  30. Portrait of Doña Juana Pacheco, wife of the author (bust length;
      in profile).
  31. Portrait of a Girl (daughter of Velazquez?).
  32. Portrait of a Girl (another daughter of Velazquez?).
  33. Portrait of a middle-aged Lady (half length).
  34. Portrait of Don Antonio Alonso Pimentel, ninth Count of Benavente,
      Groom of the Bedchamber to King Philip IV.
  35. Portrait of the Sculptor, Martinez Montanes (half length).
  36. Portrait of Pablillos de Valladolid, a Jester of King Philip IV.
  37. Portrait of Pernia, a Jester of King Philip IV. (commonly known
      as the Portrait of "Barbarroja").
  38. Portrait of a Jester of King Philip IV., nicknamed Don Juan de
      Austria.
  39. Portrait of a Dwarf of King Philip IV., called "El Primo."
  40. Portrait of a Dwarf of King Philip IV. (Sebastian de Morra?)
  41. Portrait of Don Antonio, an English (?) Dwarf of King Philip IV.
      (with a mastiff).
  42. The Boy of Vallecas.
  43. The Idiot of Coria.
  44. Æsop.
  45. Menippus.
  46. The God Mars.
  47. Portrait of a Man (bust length).
  48. Portrait of a Man (bust length).
  49. Portrait of Alonso Martinez de Espinar, Groom of the Bedchamber
      to Prince Baltasar Carlos (bust length).
  50. View in the Garden of the Villa Medici, Rome.
  51. View in the Garden of the Villa Medici, Rome.
  52. View of the "Calle de la Reina" in Aranjuez, with a Royal
      Cavalcade on the road.
  53. Study of an old Man's head, in profile.
  54. Study of an old Man's head (a smaller copy).
  55. Portrait of Philip IV., in court dress.
  56. Portrait of Prince Baltasar Carlos, as a child, in court dress.
  57. A Group of Figures, presumably painted by Velazquez, in the
      foreground of a "View of Zaragoza", by Juan Bautista Martinez
      del Mazo.
  58. Another group of Figures in the same picture.
  59. Portrait of Doña Mariana de Austria, second wife of Philip IV.,
      dressed in mourning (now attributed to Juan B. M. del Mazo).


II.--_REMBRANDT_

A second collection (also presented by Lord Savile) consists of forty
copies, painted in oil-colour, on a reduced scale by Herr Paul Roemer,
from pictures by Rembrandt in the Imperial Gallery of the Hermitage,
St. Petersburg. The subjects are as follows:--

Enclosed in one Frame--

  1. The Denial of St. Peter.
  2. Portrait of Rembrandt's Mother; half length; seated, holding
      a book on her knees.
  3. Portrait of Rembrandt's Mother; half length; seated.
  4. Portrait of a young Warrior in armour.
  5. Portrait of an aged Jew; half length; seated.
  6. Portrait of a Man; half length; standing.
  7. Portrait of a Woman; half length; seated.
  8. Portrait of the Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel; seated.
  9. A young female Servant, with a broom.
  10. "Le Benedicite." (A Peasant family saying grace.)

Enclosed in one Frame--

  11. Abraham at Table with the Angels.
  12. Jacob's elder Sons showing him Joseph's garment.
  13. Potiphar's Wife accusing Joseph.
  14. The Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard.
  15. The Incredulity of St. Thomas.
  16. Portrait of Rembrandt's Mother; half length; seated.
  17. Portrait of a young Jewess, crowned with flowers.
  18. Portrait of a Turk; half length.
  19. Portrait of a Man.
  20. Portrait of a young Man, with long fair hair.
  21. Portrait of a young Man, dressed in black.
  22. Portrait of an old Man.

Enclosed in one Frame--

  23. The Sacrifice of Abraham.
  24. The Holy Family.
  25. The Return of the Prodigal Son.
  26. Danaë.
  27. Portrait of an old Officer.
  28. A Young Girl at her Toilet.
  29. Portrait of a Man.
  30. Portrait of a Woman.
  31. A Landscape; with figures representing the journey to Emmaus.
  32. View on the Rhine.
  33. The Toilet of a young Jewish Girl.

Enclosed in one Frame--

  34. The Disgrace of Haman.
  35. The Descent from the Cross.
  36. Portrait of Lieven Willemszon van Copenol, the Calligrapher.
  37. The Mother of Rembrandt; half length; seated.
  38. Portrait of an aged Jew.
  39. Portrait of an old Man.
  40. A Nun teaching a Child to read.


III.--_MURILLO, ETC._

A third collection (presented by Dr. E. J. Longton, of Southport)
consists of forty-five small water-colour copies, by W. West, from
pictures by old masters, principally in the Prado Gallery at Madrid.
The following are the subjects:--

After Murillo--

  1. The Adoration of the Shepherds. Prado, Madrid.
  2. St. Elizabeth of Hungary tending the Sick. Academy of St.
      Fernando, Madrid.
  3. The Dream of the Roman Senator and his Wife. _Ibid._
  4. The Roman Senator and his Wife telling their Dream to Pope
      Liberius. _Ibid._
  5. St. Thomas of Villanueva giving alms. Museum, Seville.
  6. Christ on the Cross, supported by St. Francis. _Ibid._
  7. SS. Justa and Rufina. _Ibid._
  8. St. Anthony with the Infant Saviour. Museum, Seville.
  9. St. Felix restoring the Infant Christ to the Virgin. _Ibid._
  10. La Vergen de la Servilleta. _Ibid._
  11. Moses striking the Rock in Horeb. La Caridad, Seville.
  12. St. John the Baptist as a Child, with the Lamb. _Ibid._
  13. The Charity of St. Juan de Dios. _Ibid._

After Zurbaran (?)

14. A Legendary Subject.

After Velazquez--

  15. Los Borrachos (The Tipplers). Prado, Madrid.
  16. Portrait of Philip IV. (with a Dog). _Ibid._
  17. Prince Balthazar as a Boy on his Pony. _Ibid._
  18. Portrait of the Infanta Doña Margarita. _Ibid._
  19. Portrait of a Male Dwarf, with a Dog. _Ibid._
  20. Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour); Velazquez in his Studio
      painting the Infanta Margarita Maria. _Ibid._
  21. Equestrian Portrait of Philip IV. _Ibid._
  22. Portrait of the Earl of Nottingham. _Ibid._

After Titian--

  23. Portrait of Philip II. as a Young Man. _Ibid._
  24. Equestrian Portrait of Charles. _Ibid._
  25. The Bacchanal. _Ibid._
  26. Portrait of Charles V., with a Dog. _Ibid._
  27. Portrait of an Officer.

After Rubens--

  28. The Three Graces. _Ibid._
  29. The Garden of Love. _Ibid._

After Van Dyck--

  30. The Betrayal of Christ. _Ibid._
  31. Portrait of Henry, Count de Berg. _Ibid._
  32. Portrait of a Cavalier. _Ibid._

After Ribera--

  33. Jacob receiving Isaac's Blessing. _Ibid._
  34. Jacob's Dream. _Ibid._

After Jordaens--

35. Family Group in a Garden. _Ibid._

After Raphael--

  36. The Holy Family (La Perla). Prado, Madrid.
  37. The Holy Family (La Rosa). _Ibid._
  38. The Holy Family (Del Lagarto). _Ibid._
  39. Christ bearing the Cross (Lo Spasimo). _Ibid._

After Correggio--

40. Noli me tangere. _Ibid._

After Claude--

41. Landscape, with St. Mary Magdalen kneeling. _Ibid._

After Giorgione--

42. The Virgin and Child, with St. Bridget. _Ibid._

After Rembrandt--

43. Queen Artemisia. _Ibid._

After Sir A. More--

44. Queen Mary of England. _Ibid._

After Parmigiano--

      45. Portrait of a Lady with three Children (probably Riccarda
      Malaspina, Wife of Lorenzo Cibo). _Ibid._


IV.--_THE ARUNDEL SOCIETY'S COLLECTION_

The Arundel Society was formed in 1849 in order to meet "a revived
interest in art by suitable instruction." In the case of early
Italian art, "the materials for such instruction were abundant, but
scattered, little accessible, and, in some instances, passing away."
The Society set itself to secure engravings and other records of
works of art which came within the description just given. A large
collection of water-copies from the Old Masters was thus accumulated,
and the Collection was in 1897 deposited in the National Gallery on
loan. Two years later, the Society was wound up, and the collection
was given to the nation. It is of great interest and value to all
students of mediæval art. Many of the Arundel copies are familiar from
reproductions in chromo-lithography. "The latter," as a well-known
critic has remarked, "although they undoubtedly did good service in
their time by calling attention to the less known and less easily
available masterpieces of the earlier Italian art, were often
enough lamentable caricatures of the things which they professed to
represent. The drawings themselves are, however, in many cases, of an
exquisite accuracy, of which the reproductions give little or no idea.
Of course, when the attempt is made to copy in this medium the great
achievements of Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Palma Vecchio,
Paolo Veronese,--or even of such earlier colourists as the Van Eycks
and Memlinc,--failure, more or less complete, must inevitably be the
result. It would be difficult, on the other hand, to overestimate the
value of such copies as those of the famous frescoes of Mantegna in
the Church of the Eremitani at Padua, those of Benozzo Gozzoli at San
Gimignano and Montefalco, of Piero della Francesca at Arezzo, or of
the great galaxy of Quattrocento painters--Perugino, Pinturicchio,
Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, Cosimo Rosselli, and Piero di
Cosimo--who worked in the Sixtine Chapel before Michelangelo came to
dwarf and efface them with his stupendous ceiling, and, thirty years
later on, with his 'Last Judgment.' For the purposes of study and
comparison these copies, lent by the Arundel Society, fulfil much the
same role as does a good museum of casts from antique masterpieces.
They do not enable the student of art to form a complete idea of the
originals, any more than the copies of the Pheidian and Praxitelean
sculptures do; but they enlarge his view of the scope and significance
of Italian and Netherlandish art in their greatest phases, and happily
they fill up gaps which must occur even in the most various and
representative collection, such as is the National Gallery."[264]

It is hoped that the following catalogue may serve to bring before
the notice of visitors the importance of a collection which deserves
much greater attention than it has hitherto received. The artists
represented are arranged alphabetically, with references to such of
them as are also represented by original work in the National Gallery.
After the title of each work, information is given as to the nature
of the original from which the copy is made, and the place where the
original is. The numerals after each picture refer to the numbers at
present on the frames.

      ALBERTINELLI (see under 645).

      The Visitation (11): picture, Uffizi, Florence.

      ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO (see under 1138).

      The Last Supper (120): fresco, Convent S. Apollonia, Florence.

      ANGELICO, FRA (see under 663).

  Christ and Magdalen (51): fresco, Convent of S. Marco, Florence.
  Christ at Emmaus (76):      "       "           "         "
  The Transfiguration (49):   "       "           "         "
  The Crucifixion (91):       "       "           "         "
  The Entombment (50):        "       "           "         "
  The Marys at the Sepulchre (53):    "           "         "
  Madonna and Child, etc. (65):       "           "         "
  The Presentation (54):      "       "           "         "
  The Annunciation:           "       "           "         "
  Coronation of the Virgin:   "       "           "         "
  Christ as a Pilgrim (70):   "       "           "         "
  Ordination of St. Stephen (55): fresco, Vatican, Rome.
  Adoration of the Magi (166):      "        "       "
  Lives of SS. Stephen and Lawrence (128, 131, 134, 193, 194,
      etc.): frescoes, Chapel of St. Lawrence, Vatican.

      ["The remote little chapel containing Fra Angelico's
      masterpieces." Without seeing it, no one can have any
      conception of "the strength and freedom of the artist." "These
      frescoes are the highest expression of that which the friar for
      many years had been striving after. They are an anthology of
      his artistic virtues" (_Fra Angelico_, by Langton Douglas: see
      pp. 141-158 for a full discussion of them).]

AVANZO, JACOPO D' (Veronese: painted 1377).

  St. Lucy and her Judges (36): fresco, S. Antonio, Padua.
  Martyrdom of St. George (183): fresco, S. Giorgio, Padua.

BARTOLOMMEO, FRA (_see_ under 1694).

  Christ at Emmaus (72): fresco, S. Marco, Florence.
  Vision of St. Dominic (45): "      "    "
  Virgin and Child (24):      "      "    "
  "Noli me tangere":          "      "    "


BELLINI, GIOVANNI (see under 189).

Virgin and Child (62): picture, Frari, Venice.

      ["The art of Bellini is centrally represented by two pictures
      at Venice: one the Madonna in the sacristy of the Frari with
      two saints beside her, and ten angels at her feet; the second,
      the "Madonna with four Saints" over the second altar of San
      Zaccaria. In the first of these the figures are under life
      size, and it represents the most perfect kind of picture for
      rooms; in which, since it is intended to be seen close to the
      spectator, every right kind of finish possible to the hand may
      be wisely lavished; yet which is not a miniature, nor in any
      wise petty or ignoble, etc." (Ruskin: _Relation between Michael
      Angelo and Tintoret_, p. 14).]

BOCCACCIO BOCCACCINO (see under 806).

Christ among the Doctors (57): fresco, Cathedral, Cremona.

BOTTICELLI (see under 1034).

Spring (86): picture, Belle Arti, Florence.

      [The most probable explanation of the allegory is this:--The
      picture represents a masque or joust of Spring given by
      Giuliano de' Medici in honour of his mistress, "La Simonetta
      Vespucei," who is here represented as Spring, Giuliano himself
      figuring as Mercury. In the centre is Venus with Cupid above
      her head, pointing an arrow at Giuliano. Shortly after the
      joust, Giuliano was murdered, and La Simonetta died. The
      death-like figure to the extreme left, breathing upon Spring,
      represents the premonition of these coming disasters. Simonetta
      was a favourite model of Botticelli's, the same slender and
      long-throated lady appearing in many of his works, though
      sometimes spiritualised almost past recognition (cf. _Ariadne
      Florentina_, Appendix iv.; and a sonnet by D. G. Rossetti
      describing this picture).]

  Destruction of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (180): fresco, Sistine Chapel.
  Moses at the Well (185): fresco, Sistine Chapel.
  The Temptation (110):      "         "     "
  Venus rising from the Sea (87): picture, Uffizi, Florence.

      [For an interesting description and interpretation of
      this picture, see Pater's _Studies in the History of the
      Renaissance_: "The light is cold--mere Sunless dawn; but a
      later painter would have cloyed you with sunshine; and you
      can see the better for that quietness in the morning air each
      long promontory as it slopes down to the water's edge. Men go
      forth to their labours until the evening; but she is awake
      before them, and you might think that the sorrow in her face
      was at the thought of the whole long day of love yet to come.
      An emblematical figure of the wind blows hard across the grey
      water, moving forward the dainty-tipped shell on which she
      sails, the sea 'showing his teeth' as it moves in their lines
      of foam, and sucking in one by one the falling roses.... What
      is unmistakable is the sadness with which Botticelli has
      conceived the Goddess of Pleasure as the depositary of a great
      power over the lives of men."]

  Giovanna Tornabuoni and the Graces.
  Lorenzo Tornabuoni and the Liberal Arts.

      [Copies from the frescoes formerly in the Villa Lemmi, near
      Florence, now in the Louvre: for a description of them, see
      Ruskin's _Art of England_, § 69.]

BUFFALMACCO (Florentine: 1262-1351).

Raising of Lazarus (216): fresco, Assisi.

CARPACCIO (see under 750).

  St. George baptizing the Princess (79): picture, S. Giorgio
      degli Schiavoni, Venice.
  St. Jerome in his study (89):           "        "          "
  The Calling of St. Matthew (77):        "        "          "
  St. George and the Dragon (190):        "        "          "

      [See for full descriptions of these pictures Ruskin's "St.
      Mark's Rest," _Shrine of the Slaves_.]

St. Vitale and Saints (259); picture, Church S. Vitale, Venice.

      [Signed, and dated 1514. An admirable example of the master.]

CIMABUE (see under 565).

Frescoes in the upper church of Assisi (137-155).

      ["In these works there is an evident struggle in the mind of
      the artist to give to traditional form the expression of a
      living intention; but all that belongs to a closer imitation
      of nature in her individual peculiarities--all that belongs
      to the conception of characteristic or graceful action,--is
      still wanting. The form of the countenance is alike throughout;
      the expression, as conveyed by mien, always constrained. Yet,
      notwithstanding all these defects, these works must be regarded
      as having been mainly instrumental in opening a new path to the
      free exercise of art."--Kugler.]

DOMENICO DI BARTOLO (SIENESE: died 1449).

Copies from two of the frescoes in the Hospital of S. Maria della
Scala, at Siena (Nos. 1 and 6 of the series, "The Rearing, Education,
and Marriage of Foundlings," and "Pope Celestine's approval of the
building of the Hospital").

DÜRER, ALBERT (see under 1938).

  St. John and St. Peter (99): picture, Pinakothek, Munich.
  St. Mark and St. Paul (103):  "        "          "
  Adoration of the Trinity (101): picture, Belvedere, Vienna.

EYCK, VAN, The Brothers (see under 186).

Adoration of the Lamb (107): altar-piece, Cathedral, Ghent.

      [This famous picture has been put together, in the copy, from
      the originals, which are now distributed among Ghent (three
      central panels), Brussels (the Adam and Eve), and Berlin (the
      remaining panels).]

FOLIGNO, NICCOLO DA (see under 1107).

Virgin and Child (40): altar-piece, Gualdo Tadino, Umbria.

FORLI, MELOZZO DA (see under 755).

  Pope Sixtus VI. (38): fresco, Vatican Gallery, Rome.
  Angels (68, 76, 206, 217): fresco, sacristy, St. Peter's, Rome.

FRANCESCA, PIERO DELLA (see under 665).

The Resurrection (32): fresco, Palazzo Communale, Borgo San Sepolcro.

Battle for the Recovery of the True Cross (178): fresco, S. Francesco,
Arezzo.

St. Helena finding the True Cross: fresco, S. Francesco, Arezzo.

Dream of Constantine (161): fresco, S. Francesco, Arezzo.

      ["The movement and life in the compositions, the variety in the
      expressions of the numerous figures, their energy of action,
      and the grand treatment of the draperies, are all equally
      remarkable."--Kugler.]

FRANCIA (see under 180).

  Marriage of St. Cecilia: fresco, St. Cecilia, Bologna.
  Burial of St. Cecilia:    "      "            "

GADDI, AGNOLO (Florentine: died 1396).

  Nativity of the Virgin (207): fresco, cathedral of Prato.
  Betrothal (179):               "      "           "

GADDI, TADDEO (see under 215).

Adoration of the Magi (113): fresco, lower church, Assisi.

GHIRLANDAJO (see under 1230).

  Calling of the Apostles (115): fresco, Sistine Chapel, Rome.
  The Last Supper (88): fresco, Ognissanti, Florence.
  St. John the Baptist (90): fresco, S. Maria Novella, Florence.
  Zacharias Naming his Son (92):       "        "         "
  Birth of the Baptist (111):          "        "         "
  Angel appearing to Zacharias (132):  "        "         "
  Baptism of Christ (159):             "        "         "
  Expulsion of Joachim (171):          "        "         "
  Birth of the Virgin (172):           "        "         "
  Marriage of the Virgin (175):        "        "         "
  The Salutation (195):                "        "         "
  Massacre of the Innocents (196):     "        "         "
  Presentation in the Temple (226):    "        "         "

      [For a criticism of Ghirlandajo's frescoes in this church, see
      Ruskin's _Mornings in Florence_, pp. 25, 26.]

  The Emperor Augustus and the Sibyl (84): fresco, S. Trinita, Florence.
  Death of St. Francis of Assisi: fresco, S. Trinita, Florence.
  Death of S. Fina (47): fresco, Cappella S. Fina, S. Gimignano.
  Burial of S. Fina (158):        "        "         "

GIORGIONE (see under 269).

Virgin and Child (9): altar-piece Castelfranco.

      [This according to Ruskin, is one of the "two most perfect
      pictures in existence; alone in the world, as an imaginative
      representation of Christianity, with a monk and a soldier on
      either side, the soldier bearing the white cross of everlasting
      peace on the purple ground of former darkness."--_Oxford
      Lecture_, reported in Cook's _Studies_ in _Ruskin_, p. 251. For
      a further description of the picture, see _Stones of Venice_,
      Travellers' edition, ii. pp. 177-179.]

GIOTTO (see under 568).

The Life of St. Francis (2, 95, 199-205, 215-220): frescoes, upper
church of S. Francesco, Assisi.

The Virtues: frescoes, lower church of S. Francesco, Assisi.

      [Here, in "the cradle of Florentine art," the young Giotto
      worked out his apprenticeship as a painter. For Ruskin's
      estimate of Giotto's work at Assisi, see _Fors Clavigera_ for
      1877.]

  Vices and Virtues (82 A, etc.): frescoes, Arena Chapel, Padua.
  Pietà:                             "           "          "

GOZZOLI (see under 283).

Scenes from the Life of St. Francis (208, 222, 242, 267): frescoes,
church S. Francesco, Montefalco.

Virgin and Child (97): altar-piece, church of S. Francesco, Montefalco.

Scenes from the Life of St. Agostino (46, 224, 243, 244): frescoes,
church S. Agostino, S. Gimignano.

The Journey of the Three Kings to Bethlehem (37, 39, 41, 123, 248):
frescoes, Riccardi Palace, Florence.

      ["The chapel in the Palazzo Medici, now Riccardi, is made the
      scene of the journey, represented in a sumptuous procession of
      knights, squires, and pages, with dogs and hunting leopards.
      He has also introduced portraits of various members of the
      Medici family and of some of the principal citizens of
      Florence."--Kugler's _Italian Schools_, i. 164.]

Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca: fresco, Campo Santo, Pisa.

GUIDO DA SIENA.

Virgin and Child (241): picture, S. Domenico, Siena.

      [Stated on an inscription to have been painted in 1221. Relying
      on the date, the Sienese have disputed the claims of the
      Florentines to have been the regenerators of Italian art. But
      it has been proved that the numerals have been tampered with,
      the true date being 1281.]

HOLBEIN (see under 1314).

The Meier Madonna (102): picture, Palace Princess Charles, Darmstadt.

      [This is from the original, of which there is a celebrated copy
      at Dresden. "The received tradition respecting the Holbein
      Madonna is beautiful, and I believe the interpretation to be
      true. A father and a mother have prayed to her for the life
      of their sick child. She appears to them, her own Christ in
      her arms. She puts down her Christ beside them--takes their
      child into her arms instead. It lies down upon her bosom,
      and stretches its hand to its father and mother, saying
      farewell."--Ruskin's _On the Old Road_, i. pp. 234, 235.]

LIBRI, GIROLAMO DAI (see under 748).

Virgin and Child (44): picture, S. Giorgio, Verona.

LEONARDO DA VINCI (see under 1093).

Virgin and Child: fresco, St. Onofrio, Rome.

LIPPI, FRA FILIPPO (see under 666).

  Virgin and Child (34): picture, Uffizi, Florence.
  Virgin and Child (100): picture, Belle Arti, Florence.

      [This is one of the four pictures selected by Mr. Ruskin for
      his series of "Lesson Photographs."--See _Fors Clavigera_,
      1875, pp. 307-310; 1876, p. 187.]

  Burial of St. Stephen (238): fresco, cathedral of Prato.
  Heads from frescoes (157, 170): "       "           "

LIPPI, FILIPPINO (see under 293).

Virgin and Child (66): fresco, cathedral, Prato.

Vision of S. Bernard (1): altar-piece, Badia, Florence.

Glorification of St. Thomas Aquinas, two heads from: fresco (157);
Cappella, Carafa, S. Maria sopra Minerva, Rome.

      [For a description of this remarkable fresco, "barbarously
      restored and repainted in 1874," see Kugler's _Italian Schools
      of Painting_, i. 160.]

St. Peter delivered from prison: fresco, Brancacci chapel, Carmine,
Florence.

St. Peter and St. Paul before Nero, and Martyrdom of St. Peter: fresco,
Brancacci chapel, Carmine, Florence.

St. Peter visited by St. Paul: fresco, Brancacci chapel, Carmine,
Florence.

      [See also Masaccio and Masolino; the Arundel Society's
      ascriptions are here followed, but the ascription of these
      frescoes to one or other of the three artists, Filippino Lippi,
      Masaccio, and Masolino is doubtful.]

LORENZETTI, PIETRO (see under 1113).

  The Deposition (29): fresco, lower church, Assisi.
  Good Government: frescoes, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena.

LORENZO, FIORENZO DI (see under 1103).

Events in the Life of St. Bernardino (30, 229, 230): pictures,
Pinacoteca, Perugia.

LUINI (see under 18).

  Ippolita Sforza in prayer, with attendant saints (74): fresco,
      S. Maurizio, Milan.
  Donor and Saints (266): fresco, S. Maurizio, Milan.
  St. Catherine (268): fresco, Santuario della Madonna, Saronno.
  St. Apollonia (260):            "        "              "
  Head of an Attendant (125):     "        "              "
  Head of the Virgin (117):       "        "              "
  Marriage of the Virgin:         "        "              "
  Adoration of the Magi:          "        "              "
  Christ among the Doctors:       "        "              "
  Presentation:                   "        "              "

Madonna and Child (160): fresco, S. Maria degli Angioli, Lugano.

      [In a side chapel to the right of the entrance. "One of the
      loveliest little pictures in Italy. It is dated 1530, and
      is probably the last work which the golden hand of Luini
      bequeathed to the world."--Lund's _Como and Italian Lake-land_,
      p. 432.]

MANTEGNA (see under 274).

The Histories of SS. James and Christopher (38, 42, 227, 230, 236,
239); frescoes, Eremitani Chapel, Padua.

      [The most important works of Mantegna's youth. "His early
      frescoes in the Eremitani look as though they had been painted
      from statues or clay models, carefully selected for the
      grandeur of their forms, the nobility of their attitudes,
      and the complicated beauty of their drapery."--Symonds:
      _Renaissance_, iii. 197.]

MASACCIO (Florentine: 1401-1428).

St. Peter and St. John giving alms: fresco, Brancacci Chapel, Carmine,
Florence.

St. Peter and St. John healing the sick: fresco, Brancacci Chapel,
Carmine, Florence.

St. Peter preaching: fresco, Brancacci Chapel, Carmine, Florence.

The Expulsion from Paradise: " " "

The Tribute Money: " " "

St. Peter and St. Paul raising the King's son: fresco, Brancacci
Chapel, Carmine, Florence.

Homage of St. Peter: fresco, Brancacci Chapel, Carmine, Florence.

      [For Masaccio, as the first "naturalist" in landscape, see
      Ruskin's notices of the frescoes in _Modern Painters_, vols. i.
      and iii.]

MASOLINO (Florentine: 1383-1447).

The History of the Baptist (119, 127, 169, 211): frescoes, Castiglione
d' Olona (near Varese).

The Prophet Isaiah (167): fresco, Castiglione d' Olona (near Varese).

The Temptation: fresco, Castiglione d' Olona (near Varese).

St. Peter and St. John raising Petronilla: fresco, Brancacci Chapel,
Carmine, Florence.

      [Tommaso di Cristoforo Fini, known as Masolino da Panicale,
      from the place of his birth, is supposed to have been the
      teacher of Masaccio. He was for some time in the service of
      Cardinal Branda Castiglione. These frescoes, on one of which
      he inscribed his name, were executed 1426-1437. They "indicate
      a careful study of nature, though the type of composition is
      still that of the 14th century."]

MEISTER WILHELM (see under 687).

Virgin and Child (104): picture, collection Archbp. of Cologne.

MEMLINC (see under 686).

  Panels from Triptych (105): Hospital St. John, Bruges.
  Crucifixion (106): triptych, Lübeck Cathedral.

MEMMI, SIMONE (Sienese: born 1283).

Annunciation (78): picture, Louvre, Paris.

Death-bed of St. Martin (277): fresco, church S. Francesco, Assisi.

Investiture of St. Martin: fresco, church S. Francesco, Assisi.

St. Martin renouncing the Emperor's service (124): fresco, church S.
Francesco, Assisi.

      [The real name of this Sienese painter was Simone Martini. He
      is celebrated by Petrarch: "I have known two painters," he
      writes, "talented both and excellent, Giotto of Florence and
      Simone of Siena."]

MICHAEL ANGELO (see under 790).

  Delphic Sibyl (20): fresco, Sistine Chapel, Rome.
  Persic Sibyl (262):   "            "         "
  Ezekiel (17):         "            "         "
  Jeremiah (16):        "            "         "

      [For Ruskin's criticism of these frescoes, see (among other
      places) _Ariadne Florentina_, ch. iv.]

MONTAGNA (see under 802).

  St. John Baptist and St. Benedict (6): picture, SS. Nazzaro e
      Celso, Verona.
  SS. Nazzaro e Celso (8): picture, SS. Nazzaro e Celso, Verona.
  St. Blaise led to execution: "          "                "

MORANDO (see under 735).

The Deposition (80): picture, Municipal Museum, Verona.

PACCHIAROTTO (see under 1849).

St. Catherine and St. Agnes (10): fresco, oratory of S. Catherine,
Siena.

PALMA VECCHIO (see under 636).

Virgin and Child (212): picture, church S. Stefano, Vicenza.

      [S. Lucia stands on the left; on the right, St. George in
      armour with his banner--a grand figure recalling the S.
      Liberale in Giorgione's picture at Castelfranco. One of Palma's
      finest works.]

PERUGINO (see under 288).

  Christ's charge to Peter (56): fresco, Sistine Chapel, Rome.
  Baptism of Christ (181):         "            "         "
  Moses and the Angel (197):       "            "         "

      [Attributed by Morelli to Pinturicchio: see _German Galleries_,
      p. 264.]

Adoration of the Magi (96): fresco, S. Maria de' Bianchi, Città della
Pieve.

Crucifixion (5): fresco, S. Maria Maddalena de Pazzi, Florence.

Marriage of the Virgin (73): fresco, Convent of S. Girolamo, Spello.

Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (28): fresco, chapel of convent at Panicale.

Nativity and Adoration (7): fresco S. Francesco del Monte, Perugia.

The Transfiguration (4): fresco, Sala del Cambio, Perugia.

PERUZZI (see under 218).

Augustus and the Sibyl (250): fresco, church of Fonte Giusta, Siena.

      [Peruzzi imparted to this picture, says Lanzi, "such a divine
      enthusiasm that Raffaelle himself never surpassed him in his
      treatment of this subject."]

PINTURICCHIO (see under 693).

Glorification of St. Bernardino (186): fresco, church of Aracoeli, Rome.

Burial of St. Bernardino (130): fresco, church of Aracoeli, Rome.

      ["Somewhat slight and hard in execution, but full of expression
      and individual life."--Kugler.]

Betrothal of Frederick III. (75): fresco, Piccolomini Library, Siena.

Piccolomini receiving a Cardinal's hat (71): fresco, Piccolomini
Library, Siena.

A drawing of the interior of the Piccolomini Library, showing
Pinturicchio's frescoes (43).

The Nativity (82): fresco, S. Maria del Popolo, Rome.

St. Catherine of Alexandria (59): fresco, Appartamenti Borgia, Vatican.

Virgin in Glory (3): altar-piece at Monte Oliveto.

Annunciation: fresco, Cathedral, Spello.

Nativity: " ""

Christ among the doctors: ""

PORDENONE (see 272).

Adoration of the Magi (176): fresco, castle of Coll' Alto, near
Conegliano.

Flight into Egypt (225): fresco, castle of Coll' Alto, near Conegliano.

RAPHAEL (see under 1171).

  Philosophy (22): fresco, in one of the Stanze, Vatican.
  Poetry (25):       "             "             "
  Poets on Mt. Parnassus (21):     "             "
  St. Peter delivered from Prison (19):          "
  Theology (23):     "             "             "
  Justice (26):      "             "             "
  Expulsion of Heliodorus (213):   "             "
  Mass of Bolsena (121):           "             "

      [These frescoes, in one of the chambers of the Vatican, are
      those by which, according to Ruskin, Raphael "wrote upon
      its walls the _Mene_, _Tekel_, _Upharsin_ of the Arts of
      Christianity." See _Edinburgh Lectures on Architecture and
      Painting_, pp. 213, 214.]

The Four Sibyls (63): fresco, S. Maria della Pace, Rome.

ROMAN WALL PAINTING.

The Nursing of Bacchus (13): Farnesina Gardens, Rome.

ROMANINO (see under 297).

Visit of Christian II., King of Denmark, in 1475 to Bartolomeo Colleoni
(58, 182, 188, 228, 234, 240): frescoes, Castle of Malpaga, near
Bergamo.

      ["There is perhaps no edifice of the kind which gives so
      complete an idea of the residence of a great Italian nobleman
      in the middle ages." The frescoes are fully described in Mr.
      Oscar Browning's _Life of Bartolomeo Colleoni_, published by
      the Arundel Society in 1891. "These pictures are extremely
      interesting as showing the manners and customs of the time; and
      we cannot but feel that an age which could have crowded into
      so short a space so many scenes replete with life and colour,
      with dignity and magnificence, must be worthy of our study.
      Romanino, the reputed author of the frescoes, was born ten
      years after the events which they portray. He must, therefore,
      have worked from the family records of what occurred, although
      in his own age the life of chivalry was not altogether dead. It
      is more probable, however, that they were executed by one of
      his pupils."]

ROSSELLI, COSIMO (Florentine: 1439-1507).

  Worship of the Golden Calf (135): fresco, Sistine Chapel, Rome.
  The Last Supper (184):              "            "         "
  Passage of the Red Sea (192):       "            "         "
  Sermon on the Mount (198):          "            "         "

      [The latter is the most successful. The landscape and perhaps
      other parts are by his pupil, Piero di Cosimo. To Rosselli was
      formerly attributed No. 227 in our Gallery.]

SANTI, GIOVANNI (see under 751).

Nativity and Resurrection (4): fresco, St. Domenico, Cagli.

SARTO, ANDREA DEL (see under 690).

The Last Supper (122): fresco, S. Salvi, Florence.

      [A celebrated work in a convent, now a lunatic asylum, near
      Florence: commissioned in 1519, finished in 1527. Described and
      highly praised by Vasari (iii. 224), who says that the beauty
      of the fresco saved the convent from destruction during the
      siege of Florence in 1529-30.]

Charity (94): fresco, cloisters of Campagnia dello Scalzo, Florence.

      [This fresco is the subject of an interesting dissertation by
      Max Müller, published by the Fine Art Society, 1887.]

St. John Baptist preaching (93): fresco, cloisters of Campagnia dello
Scalzo, Florence.

Birth of the Virgin (51): fresco, Annunziata, Florence.

  Procession of the Magi (33): fresco, Annunziata, Florence.
  St. Filippo Benizzi (52):       "        "          "
  Madonna del Saco:               "        "          "

SIGNORELLI (see under 1128).

Scenes from Life of Moses (60): fresco, Sistine Chapel, Rome.

St. Benedict receiving the true King Totila (144): fresco, Monte
Oliveto.

St. Benedict receiving the false King Totila (257): fresco, Monte
Oliveto.

      [For a description of these frescoes at Monte Oliveto, see Maud
      Cruttwell's _Luca Signorelli_, p. 58.]

  The Crowning of the Elect (165): fresco, cathedral, Orvieto.
  Portraits of Dante and Virgil (from the same): "       "

      [For a description of these see Bevir's _Visitor's Guide to
      Orvieto_, p. 43, etc.]

SODOMA (see under 1144).

  Presentation of SS. Placidas and Maurus to St. Benedict (233):
      fresco, Monte Oliveto.
  St. Benedict Preaching (98): fresco, Monte Oliveto.
  Christ (12): fresco, convent of S. Anna, near Siena.
  Christ bound to the Column (61): picture, Academy, Siena.
  Swoon of St. Catherine (69): fresco, S. Domenico, Siena.
  Vision of St. Catherine (64):   "          "        "
  Presentation of the Virgin (263): fresco, S. Bernardino, Siena.

TIEPOLO (see under 1192).

Anthony and Cleopatra (162, 168): frescoes, Palazzo Labia, Venice.

      [The best of Tiepolo's works. "His frescoes in the Palazzo
      Labia, representing the embarkation of Anthony and Cleopatra
      on the Cydnus, and their famous banquet at Canopus, are
      worthy to be classed with the finest decorative work of Paolo
      Veronese."--J. A. Symonds: _Century Guild Hobby Horse_, April
      1889.]

TIMOTEO DELLA VITE (Ferrarese: 1469-1523).

The Magdalen (265): picture, Pinacoteca, Bologna.

      [By the first master of Raphael. The picture is mentioned by
      Vasari (iii. 114): "She is standing upright, her vestment is a
      short mantle, but the figure is covered principally with the
      long hair, which falls to her feet; and this is so beautiful
      and natural that, while observing it, one cannot but fancy
      that the light silky tresses are stirred by the wind. The
      countenance, also, has the most divine beauty of expression,
      and clearly exhibits the love which this Saint bore to her
      Lord."]

TITIAN (see under 4).

Miracles of St. Anthony of Padua (14, 133): frescoes, Scuola del Santo,
Padua.

      TURA, COSIMO (see under 772).

  Triumph of Venus (112): fresco, Schifanoia Palace, Ferrara.
  Triumph of Minerva (129):  "         "            "

      UNKNOWN PAINTER.

      Richard II. before the Madonna (27): picture, Wilton House.

      VASCO, FERNANDEZ ("Gran Vasco") (Portuguese: born 1552).

      St. Peter enthroned as Pope (48): picture, sacristy of the
      cathedral, Vizen, Portugal.

      VERONESE, PAOLO (see under 26).

      Allegorical Subjects, "Justice," "Temperance," etc. (15, 18,
      155, 156): frescoes, Villa Giacomelli, Masèr.

      [This villa, built by Palladio for Daniele Barbara in 1580, is
      reached from Cornuda, a station on the line between Treviso
      and Belluno. It contains some of Veronese's most beautiful
      wall-paintings.]

VITERBO, LORENZO DI (painted 1648).

  Betrothal of the Virgin (67): fresco, S. Maria della Verita, Viterbo.
  Presentation: fresco, S. Maria della Verita, Viterbo.

       *       *       *       *       *

There is also a copy, presented by Mrs. Bywater, of Domenico
Veneziano's "Madonna and Child" (No. 1215).


SCULPTURES AND MARBLES

Many of the sculptures belonging to the National Gallery have been
removed to the Hall of Sculpture at the Tate Gallery or to the National
Portrait Gallery. Among those that remain in Trafalgar Square are:--

"THE DYING ALEXANDER" (_in the Vestibule_).--A Renaissance copy in
Egyptian porphyry of the bust, in the Uffizi at Florence, known as
"The Dying Alexander." The bust is now generally recognised as the
work of a Pergamene sculptor, and is supposed to represent a youthful
giant. The influence of the "Alexander type" is in any case noticeable
in this fine work; a type embodying "the traces of human passion, the
imperfection of human longing, the divine despair, which attach to
the highest mortal natures because they are high and because they are
mortal."--Presented by Mr. Henry Yates Thompson.

BUST OF MANTEGNA.--A plaster cast from the bust of Mantegna in
the Mantegna Chapel at Mantua: see the description quoted under
274.--Presented by Mr. Henry Vaughan.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[264] Among works of illustration produced of late years, "the
publications of the Arundel Society," says Ruskin, "hold the first rank
in purpose and principle, having been from the beginning conducted by
a council of gentlemen in the purest endeavour for public utility,
and absolutely without taint of self-interest, or encumbrance of
operation by personal or national jealousy. Failing often, as could
not but be the case when their task was one of supreme difficulty,
and before unattempted, they have yet on the whole been successful
in producing the most instructive and historically valuable series
of engravings that have ever been put within reach of the public....
I learned more from the Arundel copy than in the chapel itself; for
the daily companionship with the engraving taught me subtleties in
the composition which had escaped me in the multitudinous interest of
visits to the actual fresco" (_Stones of Venice_, Travellers' edition,
ii, 176; and _Ariadne Florentina_, Appendix, p. 246).




APPENDIX I

INDEX LIST OF PAINTERS

WITH THE SUBJECTS OF THEIR PICTURES.


In the following list all the painters (of Foreign Schools) represented
in the National Gallery are enumerated. Painters only represented
by pictures belonging to, but now removed from, the Gallery are not
included. The painters are given in alphabetical order, and are cited
by the names by which they are most commonly known. But where such
names differ from the proper patronymics, the latter are also given,
with references to the former. Similar double references are given in
other cases where doubt is likely to arise.

In the case of names with the prefix "de" or "van," the painter should
be looked for under the initial letter of his surname: _e.g._ "Van
Dyck" under "Dyck," "Van de Cappelle" under "Cappelle."

Pictures by _unknown_ artists will be found under the schools to which
they severally belong: "Dutch," "Florentine," etc.

In the case of painters represented by several pictures, the first
reference after each name is to the page in the Handbook where some
general account of the painter will be found. The references after each
picture are to the official number on its frame, under which number the
description of the picture will be found in the preceding catalogue.


  Agii, A. Cordelle
    Marriage of St. Catherine, 1409

  Agnolo, Andrea d'. _See_ Sarto

  Albertinelli
    Virgin and Child, 645

  Aldegrever, H.
    Young Man (portrait), 1232

  Allegri. _See_ Correggio

  Allori, Alessandro, p. xix
    Portrait of a Lady, 650

  Allori, Cristofano
    A Lady (portrait), 21

  Alunno. _See_ Niccolo da Foligno

  Amberger, Christoph
    Portrait of a Young Man, 2604

  Ambrogio. _See_ Predis

  Amerighi. _See_ Caravaggio

  Angelico, Fra, p. 329
    Adoration of the Magi, 582
    The Resurrection, 663

  Angelico, _School of_
    The Annunciation, 1406

  Angelo di Taddeo Gaddi, p. xix
    Coronation of Virgin, 568

  Antonello da Messina, p. 343
    Crucifixion, 1166
    His own Portrait, 1141
    St. Jerome, 1418
    Salvator Mundi, 673

  Aretino. _See_ Spinello

  Assisi, Andrea d'. _See_ Ingegno

  Avercamp, H. van, p. 633
    Winter Scenes, 1346, 1479


  Bacchiacca, Il
    History of Joseph, 1218, 1219

  Bakhuizen, L., p. 204
    Coast Scene, 818
    Estuary, 1000
    Gale, 223
    Mouth of Thames, 819
    Ships in a Gale, 1442

  Baldung, Hans, p. 224
    A Pietà, 1427
    A Senator (portrait), 245

  Barbarelli. _See_ Giorgione

  Barbieri. _See_ Guercino

  Barnaba da Modena
    Descent of Holy Ghost, 1437

  Baroccio, F.
    Madonna del Gatto, 29

  Bartolommeo, Fra
    Virgin and Child, 1694

  Basaiti, Marco, p. 244
    Madonna of the Meadow, 599
    St. Jerome reading, 281
    Virgin and Child, 2499
    Young Venetian (portrait), 2498

  Bassano, Il, p. 182
    A Gentleman (portrait), 173
    Christ and the Money Changers, 228
    The Good Samaritan, 277

  Bastiani, Lazzaro, p. 388
    Virgin and Child, 1953
    _See also_ 750 (p. xx)

  Bazzi. _See_ Sodoma

  Beccafumi, Domenico
    Esther and Ahasuerus, 1430

  Beerestraaten, J.
    Winter Scene, 1311

  Bega, C. P.
    A Philosopher, 1481

  Bellini, Gentile, p. 584
    G. Malatini (portrait), 1213
    St. Dominic, 1440
    St. Peter Martyr, 808

  Bellini, Giovanni, p. 190
    Agony in the Garden, 726
    Blood of the Redeemer, 1233
    Circumcision, 1455
    Doge Loredano, 189
    Madonna (Pomegranate), 280
    Madonna and Child (fresco), 1696
    St. Peter Martyr (landscape), 812.
    _See also_ 599, 808, 1440 (pp. xix & xx)

  ---- School of
    The Doge Mocenigo, 750

  Beltraffio, G. A., p. 375
    Madonna and Child, 728
    ---- (Columbine), 2496
    Narcissus, 2673

  ---- _School of_
    Madonna and Child, 2089

  Benozzo. _See_ Gozzoli

  Benson, Ambrosius, p. xix
    Reading Magdalen, 655

  Benvenuti, Giov. Batt. _See_ Ortolano

  Benvenuto da Siena, p. 462
    Madonna and Child, 2482
    ---- (with St. Peter and St. Nicholas), 909

  Berchem, N., p. 150
    Crossing the Ford, 240
    Hurdy-Gurdy, 1006
    Italian Landscape, 1004
    Landscape with Ruin, 820
    Ploughing, 1005

  Berck-Heyde, G. A., p. 644
    Church Interior, 1451
    View in Haarlem, 1420

  Bertucci, p. 245
    Glorification of the Virgin, 282
    Incredulity of St. Thomas, 1051

  Betto, Bernardino di. _See_ Pinturicchio

  Bibiena, F.
    Teatro Farnese, Parma, 936

  Bigio. _See_ Franciabigio

  Bigordi. _See_ Ghirlandajo

  Bissolo, Fr., _ascribed to_
    A Lady (portrait), 631

  Bles, H., _ascribed to_
    Christ on the Cross, 718
    The Magdalen, 719

  Boccaccino, B.
    Procession to Calvary, 806

  Boel, Pieter, p. xxi
    Dogs and Game, 1903

  Bol, F.
    An Astronomer (portrait), 679

  Boltraffio. _See_ Beltraffio

  Bonfigli, B.
    Adoration of Magi, 1843

  Bonheur, Rosa
    The Horse Fair, 621

  Bonifazio (the elder)
    Madonna and Child, 1202

  Bono da Ferrara
    St. Jerome in the Desert, 771

  Bonsignori, F.
    Venetian Senator (portrait), 736

  Bonvicino. _See_ Moretto

  Bonvin, F. S.
    Village Green in France, 1448

  Bordone, Paris, p. 317
    Daphnis and Chloe, 637
    Lux Mundi, 1845
    Portrait of a Lady, 674
    Portrait of a Lady, 2097

  Borgognone, A., p. 266
    A Triptych, 1077
    The two St. Catherines, 298
    Virgin and Child, 1410
    _See also_ 779-780 (p. xx)

  ---- _School of_
    Family Portraits, 779-780

  Bosboom, Johannes
    Interior of Haarlem Church, 2712

  Bosch, P. van den
    Woman scouring Pans, 2551

  Both, Jan, p. 147
    Goatherds, 957
    Italian Landscape, 956
    ---- 1917
    Judgment of Paris, 209
    Muleteers, 71
    Walls of Rome, 958

  Botticelli, Sandro, p. 495
    Adoration of Magi, 592
    ---- (circular), 1033
    Madonna and Child (circular), 275
    Mars and Venus, 915
    Nativity of Christ, 1034
    Young Man (portrait), 626
    _See also_ 782, 1126 (p. xx)

  ---- _School of_
    Adoration of Magi, 1124
    Florentine Lady and Symbolic Angel, 2082
    Madonna and Child, 782
    Virgin and Child, etc. (circular), 226
    ---- 2497
    ---- with St. John, 1412
    _See also_ 916 (p. xx)

  Botticini, Francesco, pp. xix, 536_n._
    Assumption of the Virgin, 1126
    Raphael and Tobias, 781
    St. Jerome in the Desert, 227

  Boucher, F.
    Pan and Syrinx, 1090

  Boudin, L. E.
    Squall from the West, 2758
    Trouville Harbour, 2078

  Bourdon, Sebastien
    Return of the Ark, 64

  Bouts, Albrecht, p. xx
    Christ Crowned with Thorns, 1083

  Bouts, Dierick, pp. xix, 727
    Deposition in the Tomb, 664
    Madonna and Child Enthroned, 774
    Portrait of a Man, 943
    Virgin and Child, 2595

  Brekelenham, Q., p. 628
    Afternoon Nap, 2550
    Interior, 1329
    Tailor's Shop, 2549

  British School.   _See_ 1652 (p. xxi)

  Bronzino, Angelo, p. 322
    Piero de' Medici, 1323
    Portrait of a Boy, 649
    Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time, 651
    _See also_ 650, 670, 704 (pp. xix & xx)


  ---- _School of_
    Bianca Capello, 2085
    Cosimo I., 704
    Knight of St. Stephen, 670

  Brouwer, Adrian
    Boors Drinking, 2569

  Browne, Henriette
    A Greek Captive, 1969

  Brueghel, Jan
    Pan and Syrinx, 659

  Bruyn, Bartolomaus
    Dr. Fuchsius, 2605

  Buitenweg, W.
    Landscape, 2731

  Buonaccorso, Niccolò di
    Marriage of Virgin, 1109

  Buonarroti. _See_ Michael Angelo

  Burgundian School
    Louis XI., 2612
    Philip and Margaret, 2613

  Busi, Giovanni. _See_ Cariani


  Calame, Alexandre
    Lake of Thun, 1786

  Calcar, J. S.
    Venetian Gentleman and Child, 2597

  Caliari. _See_ Veronese, Paolo

  Callot, James
    Tartarus (drawing), 2757

  Campaña, Pedro
    Christ preaching in the Temple, 1241

  Campi, Giulio
    A Musician, 2511

  Campin, Robert, p. 729
    Virgin and Child, 2609
    ---- with Angels, 2608

  ---- _School of_
    Christ Appearing, 1086
    Death of the Virgin, 658
    The Magdalen, 654

  Canaletto, p. 163
    Eton College, 942
    Rotunda at Ranelagh, 1429
    Ruins, 135
    Venice;
      Canal Reggio, 1058
      Ducal Palace, 940
      Grand Canal, 2514
      Grimani Palace, 941
      Piazza S. Marco, 2515
      Piazzetta, 939
      Procuratie Nuove, 2516
      Regatta, 938
      San Pietro in Castello, 1059
      San Simeone Piccolo, 163
      Scuola della Carità, 127
      Scuola di San Rocco, 937

  Cappelle, Jan van de, p. 448
    A Calm, 2587
    Coast Scenes, 865, 2586
    Dutch Galliot, 2588
    River Scenes, 964, 965, and 966
    Shipping, 967

  Caravaggio
    Christ at Emmaus, 172

  Cariani, p. 582
    An Italian Nobleman, 2494
    Madonna and Child, 1203
    Vierge aux Lauriers, 2495

  ---- _ascribed to_
    Death of Peter Martyr, 41

  Carpaccio, Vittore. _See_ 750

  Carracci, Agostino, p. 168
    Cephalus and Aurora, 147
    Galatea, 148

  Carracci, Annibale, p. 68
    Bacchus and Silenus, 94
    "Domine quo vadis?" 9
    Erminia and the Shepherds, 88
    Landscape with Figures (lake), 56
    ---- (Giustiniani), 63
    Man with a Beard, 2105
    St. John in the Wilderness, 25
    Silenus, 93
    Temptation of St. Anthony, 198

  Carracci, Ludovico
    Entombment of Christ, 86
    Susannah and the Elders, 28

  Carucci. _See_ Pontormo

  Casentino. _See_ Landini

  Castagno, Andrea del
    The Crucifixion, 1138

  Catena, p. 218
    Portrait of a Young Man, 1121
    St. Jerome in his Study, 694
    Warrior adoring, 234

  Cavallino, B.
    Nativity, 1157

  Cavazzola. _See_ Morando

  Cesare da Sesto, p. 710
    Salome, 2485
    Virgin and Child, 2504

  Champaigne, Philippe de, p. 418
    Cardinal J. F. P. de Retz, 2291
    Cardinal Richelieu (heads), 798
    Cardinal Richelieu (full length), 1449

  Chardin, J. B. S., p. 599
    La Fontaine, 1664
    Still Life, 1258

  Charnay, Armand
    Parc de Sansac, 2290

  Chimenti, J., da Empoli
    San Zenobio, 1282

  Cima da Conegliano, p. 270
    David and Jonathan, 2505
    "Ecce Homo!" 1310
    Incredulity of St. Thomas, 816
    Madonna and Child (goldfinch), 634
    Madonna, 300
    St. Jerome in the Desert, 1120
    Virgin and Child, 2506

  Cimabue
    Madonna and Child, 565

  Cione, Andrea di. _See_ Orcagna

  Claude Lorrain, p. 57
    Annunciation (or Angel and Hagar), 61
    Cave of Adullam, 6
    Cephalus and Procris, 2
    Classical Landscape, 1018
    Death of Procris, 55
    Isaac and Rebecca, 12
    Landscape ("Study of Trees"), 58
    Narcissus and Echo, 19
    Seaport: Queen of Sheba, 14
    Seaport: St. Ursula, 30
    ---- Sunset, 5
    View in Rome, 1319

  Clays, P. J., p. 425
    Dutch Shipping, 814, 815

  Clouet, F., _ascribed to_, p. 329
    Boy (portrait), 1190
    Man (portrait), 660

  Codde, Pieter, p. 724
    Dutchman with Wife and Son, 2576
    Lady with Mirror, 2584

  Cologne School. _See_ German

  Conca, Sebastiano
    Angel with Keys, 1870

  Coques, Gonzales, p. 428
    Family Group, 821
    Five Senses, The, 1114-1118
    Lady (portrait), 1011

  Cordelle. _See_ Agii

  Corneille de Lyons
    Antoine de Bourbon, 2610
    A Man in Black, 2611

  Cornelissen, J., p. 327
    Gentleman and Lady, 657
    Duke Ulricus, 2209

  Corot, J. B. C., p. 698
    Bent Tree, 2625
    Cows in a Marsh, 2630
    Evening on the Lake, 2627
    Fisherman's Hut, 2631
    Flood, 2629
    Marsh of Arleux, 2135
    Noon, 2628
    Wood Gatherer, 2626

  Correggio, p. 69
    "Ecce Homo!" 15
    Magdalen, 2512
    Mercury, Cupid, and Venus, 10
    "Vierge au Panier," 23

  ---- _copies after_
    Agony in the Garden, 76
    Groups of Heads, 7, 37

  Cosimo, Piero di, p. 360
    Death of Procris, 698
    Francesco Ferruccio, 895

  Cossa, Francesco del
    St. Hyacinth, Dominican, 597

  Costa, Giovanni
    Carrara Mountains, 1493

  Costa, Lorenzo
    Madonna and Child Enthroned, 629
    Portrait of Dr. Fiera, 2083

  Cotignola. _See_ Zaganelli

  Courbet, Gustave
    The Sea, 2767

  Cranach, Lucas, p. 254
    Portrait of a Man, 1925
    Young Lady (portrait), 291

  Credi, Lorenzo di, p. 295
    Costanza de' Medici, 2490
    Virgin adoring, 648
    Virgin and Child, 593

  Cristus, Petrus, pp. xx, 726
    Marco Barbarigo, 696
    Portrait of a Man, 2593

  Crivelli, Carlo, p. 300
    Annunciation, 739
    Beato Ferretti, The, 668
    Dead Christ, The, 602
    Madonna and Child (swallow), 724
    ---- (large altar-piece), 788
    ---- (with St. Francis), 807
    Madonna in Ecstasy, 906
    St. Catherine and Mary Magdalene, 907

  Cuyp, A., p. 136
    Boy holding Horse, 2548
    Cattle and Figures ("The Large Dort"), 961
    ---- ("The Small Dort"), 962
    ---- (small), 1289
    ---- (large: evening), 53
    Cattle with Herdsman, 2547
    Horseman and Cows, 822
    Landscape (Lady and Child), 2546
    Man's Portrait, 797
    On the Meuse, 823
    River Scene, 2545
    Ruined Castle, 824
    Study of a Horse, 1683
    Windmills, 960


  Dalmasio. _See_ Lippo

  Daubigny, C. F., p. 732
    Alders, 2623
    Banks of a River, 2622
    Garden Wall, 2624
    Willows, 2621

  David, Gerard, p. 502
    Canon and Patron Saints, 1045
    Marriage of St. Catherine, 1432
    St. Jerome, 2596

  David, G., _attributed to_
    Adoration of Magi, 1079
    Deposition from the Cross, 1078

  David, J. L.
    Eliza Bonaparte, 2217

  Decker, C. G.
    Landscape, 1341

  Delacroix, F. V. E.
    Attila, 2289

  Delaroche, Paul
    Lady Jane Grey, 1909

  Delen, Dirck van
    Renaissance Architecture, 1010

  Diana, Benedetto
    Christ Blessing, 2725

  Diaz de la Peña, p. 691
    Common: Sunset, 2633
    Sunny Days in the Forest, 2058
    The Storm, 2632

  Dietrich, J. W. E.
    Itinerant Musicians, 205

  Dolci, Carlo
    Virgin and Child, 934

  Domenichino, p. 128
    Landscape (St. George and Dragon), 75
    ---- (Tobias and Angel), 48
    St. Jerome, 85
    Stoning of St. Stephen, 77

  Domenico Veneziano. _See_ Veneziano

  Dosso Dossi, p. 318
    Adoration of Magi, 640
    Muse and Court Poet, 1234

  Dou, Gerard, p. 193
    Painter's own Portrait, 192
    Painter's Wife (portrait), 968
    Portrait of a Lady, 1415
    Poulterer's Shop, 825

  Dubbels, H.
    Sea-Piece, 1462

  Duccio, p. 277
    Annunciation, 1139
    Christ healing the Blind, 1140
    Madonna and Child (triptych), 566
    Transfiguration, 1330

  Duchatel, François
    Portrait of a Boy, 1810

  Ducreux, Joseph
    His own Portrait, 2162

  Dughet. _See_ Poussin, Gaspard

  Dupré, Jules
    River Scene, 2634

  Dürer, Albrecht
    Portrait of his Father, 1938

  Dutch School (artists unknown)
    An Art Gallery, 1287
    Interior of a Stable, 1851
    Madame van der Goes, 1652 (_see_ p. xxi)
    Old Woman Sewing, 1397
    Portrait of a Young Man, 1680
    Portrait of a Gentleman, 1700

  Duyster, W. C.
    Players at Tric-Trac, 1387
    Soldiers Quarrelling, 1386

  Dyck, Sir Anthony van, p. 130
    Charles I. (Blenheim portrait), 1172
    Cornelius van der Geest ("Gevartius"), 52
    His own Portrait, 877
    Marchesa Cattaneo, 2144
    Marchese Cattaneo, 2127
    Miraculous draught of Fishes, 680
    "Portrait of Rubens," 49
    Study of Horses, 156
    Theodosius and St. Ambrose, 50
    _For drawings by Van Dyck, see_ 877 A, B

  Dyckmans, J. L.
    Blind Beggar, 600


  Eeckhout, G. van den
    The Wine Contract, 1459

  Elsheimer, Adam, p. 486
    St. Lawrence, 1014
    Tobias and the Angel, 1424

  Emmanuel
    Sts. Cosmas and Damian, 594

  Engelbertsz, Cornelis. _See 714_ p. xx

  Ercole da Ferrara. _See_ Grandi

  Everdingen, Allart van
    Landscape, 1701

  Eyck, Jan van, p. 187
    Jan Arnolfini and Wife, 186
    Man's Portrait, 222
    ---- (Leal Souvenir), 290


  Fabritius, B.
    Adoration of Shepherds, 1338
    Birth of St. John, 1339

  Fantin-Latour, H., p. 689
    Apples, 2134
    Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Edwards, 1952
    Roses, 2133
    Study of Flowers, 1686

  Fava, Giangiacomo. _See_ Macrino d'Alba

  Ferrarese School (artist unknown)
    A Battle Piece, 1062

  Ferrari, Gaudenzio
    Christ rising from the Tomb, 1465

  Fiammingo, Enrico
    Man with a collar, 2104

  Filipepi. _See_ Botticelli

  Fiorenzo di Lorenzo
    Altar-piece, 1103
    Virgin and Child, 2483

  Flemish School, 15th-16th centuries (artists unknown)
    Christ Appearing, 1280
    Count and St. Ambrose, 264
    Exhumation of St. Hubert, 783
    Head of John the Baptist, 1080
    Lady with Rosary, 2670
    Madonna and Child (book), 265
    ---- (curtain), 708
    Madonna Enthroned, 2606
    Man and Wife, 653
    Man with Medallion, 2607
    Man with a Ring, 2602
    Portrait of a Lady, 1433
    Portrait of a Man (gold chain), 947
    ---- (praying), 1081
    ---- (skull), 1036
    Portrait of a Young Man (praying), 1063
    Portrait of a Monk, 710
    Virgin and Child, with St. Elizabeth, 1089
    _See also_ 696, 709, 774, 943, 1017, 1078, 1079, 1083, 1086,
      1419, 1433 (pp. xx & xxi)

  Florentine School, 15th century (artists unknown)
    Amor and Castitas, 1196
    Savonarola (portrait), 1301
    Virgin and Child, 2508
    Young Man in Black, 2084
    _See also_ 227, 296, 781, 1199 (pp. xix & xx)

  Foligno, Niccolò da
    Crucifixion, 1107

  Foppa, Vincenzo
    Adoration of Kings, 729

  Forli, Melozzo da
    "Rhetoric" and "Music," 755, 756

  Fragonard, G. H.
    The Happy Mother, 2620

  Francesca, Piero della, p. 334
    Baptism of Christ, 665
    Lady's Portrait, 758
    Nativity, 908
    St. Michael and Dragon, 769

  Francesco di Giorgio
    St. Dorothy, 1682

  Francia, p. 184
    Bartolommeo Bianchini, 2487
    Pietà (lunette of above), 180
    Pietà, 2671
    Virgin and Child (altar-piece), 179
    Virgin and Child (smaller), 638

  Francia Bigio
    Portrait of a Young Man, 1035

  French School, 15th century (artists unknown)
    Duchesse d'Angoulême, 2617
    Lady as Mary Magdalen, 2614
    Legend of St. Giles, 1419 (see p. xxi)
    Madonna, 1335
    Mary, Queen of France, 2615
    Portrait of a Lady, 2616
    Virgin and Child with Angels, 2618
    ---- with Saints, 1939

  Fungai, B.
    Madonna and Child, 1331.
    _And see_ p. 749

  Fyt, Jan
    Dead Birds, 1003
    _See also_ 1903 (p. xxi)


  Gaddi, Taddeo, _School of_, p. 211.
    _See_ Nos. 215, 216, 579, 579 A (and p. xix)

  Gaetano. _See_ Pulzone

  Garofalo, p. 151
    Agony in the Garden, 642
    Holy Family, 170
    Madonna and Child (altar-piece), 671
    Vision of St. Augustine, 81

  Geertgen Tot Sint Jans, p. xx
    Virgin and Child (triptych), 1085

  Gellée. _See_ Claude

  Gennari, Benedetto
    His own Portrait, 2106

  Géricault, J. L. A. T.
    Lithographs of Horses, 2423

  German: School of Cologne
    Holy Family, 2603
    St. Peter and St. Dorothy, 707
    Sancta Veronica, 687
    _See also_ Lyversberg

  German: Westphalian School
    Crucifixion, 1049
    _See also_ Master of Liesborn

  German Schools, 15th-16th century
    Crucifixion, 1088
    Mocking of Christ, 1087
    Portrait of a Lady, 722
    Portrait of a Medical Professor, 195
    _See also_ Schongauer

  Ghirlandajo, Domenico, p. 591
    Portrait of a Girl, 1230
    Portrait of a Youth, 1299
    The young Florentine, 2489

  Ghirlandajo, Ridolfo
    Girolamo Benevieni, 2491
    Procession to Calvary, 1143

  Giolfino Niccolo
    Giusti Family, 749

  Giorgione, p. 230
    Adoration of Magi, 1160
    Knight in Armour, 269

  ---- _School of_
    Garden of Love, 930
    Unknown Subject, 1173
    Venus and Adonis, 1123
    _See also_ 1160, No. 636 (p. xix)

  Giotto, _School of_, p. 278
    _See also_ 276, 568 (p. xix)

  Giovanni da Milano, p. xix
    Panels of altar-piece, 579 A

  Giovenone, Girolamo
    Madonna and Child, 1295

  Girolamo dai Libri
    Madonna and Child, with St. Anne, 748

  Girolamo da Santa Croce, p. 313
    A Saint, 633
    ---- reading, 632

  Girolamo da Treviso
    Madonna and Child, Enthroned, 623

  Gonzalez, Juan G.
    Earl of Monmouth, 2527

  Gossart. _See_ Mabuse

  Goya, Francesco, p. 660
    Dr. Peral, 1951
    The Bewitched, 1472
    The Picnic, 1471
    Lady's Portrait, 1473

  Goyen, Jan van, p. 166
    Landscape, 137
    River Scenes, 151, 2580
    Scene on the Ice, 2579
    Stiff Breeze, 2577
    Windmill, 2578
    Winter Scene, 1327

  Gozzoli, Benozzo, p. 245
    Virgin and Child, 283
    _See also_ 591 (p. xix)

  ---- _School of_
    Rape of Helen, 591
    Virgin and Child, 2863

  Grandi, Ercole di Giulio, p. 531
    Conversion of St. Paul, 73
    Madonna and Child (altar-piece), 1119

  Greco. _See_ Theotocopuli

  Greek Portraits: 2nd cent. A.D.
    Eleven Portraits, 1260-1270

  Greuze, p. 205
    Girl (with apple), 1020
    ---- (with lamb), 1154
    ---- (looking up), 1019
    ---- 206

  Guardi, Francesco, p. 207
    Buildings and Figures, 2517
    Courtyard in Venice, 2519
    Ducal Palace, 2099
    Gondola, 1454
    Gothic Archway, 2518
    Piazza S. Marco, 210
    ---- (awnings), 2525
    Quay-side, 2520
    Ruins, 2521
    S. Maria della Salute, 2098
    Tower of Mestre, 2524
    Treasure-seekers, 2522
    View in Venice, 1054
    View through Archway, 2523

  Guercino
    A Pietà, 22

  Guido Reni, p. 73
    Christ and St. John, 191
    Coronation of Virgin, 214
    "Ecce Homo!" 271
    Lot and his Daughters, 193
    Magdalen, The, 177
    St. Jerome, 11
    Susannah and the Elders, 196


  Hackaert, Jan
    Stag Hunt, 829

  Hals, Dirk
    An Oyster Supper, 1074

  Hals, Frans, p. 490
    A Family Group, 2285
    Lady with fan, 2529
    Man with glove, 2528
    Man's Portrait, 1251
    Woman's Portrait, 1021

  Harpignies, Henri
    Flax Trees, Villefranche, 2257
    River Scene, 2256

  Heda, W. K.
    Fruit-piece, 2592
    Still Life, 1469

  Heem, David de
    Fruit and Flowers, 2582

  Heimbach, C. W.
    Portrait of a Youth, 1243

  Helst, Barth. van der, p. 167
    Lady's Portrait, 1937
    Young Lady's Portrait, 1248

  Hemessen, Catharina van
    Man's Portrait, 1042

  Herrera, Francesco de
    Christ disputing, 1676

  Heyden, Jan van der, p. 448
    Architectural Scene, 992
    Château, 1914
    Church, 1915
    Landscape, 993
    Street in Cologne, 866
    Street in a Town, 994

  Hobbema, p. 347
    Avenue, Middelharnis, 830
    Brederode Castle, 831
    Cottage in a Wood, 2570
    Forest Scenery, 833
    Path through a Wood, 2571
    Showery Weather, 685
    Village, with Watermills, 832
    Woody Landscape, 995

  Holbein, Hans, p. 613
    Christina of Denmark, 2475
    The Ambassadors, 1314
    _See also under_ 195

  Holbein, Sigmund. _See_ 722

  Hondecoeter, p. 203
    Domestic Poultry, 202
    Geese and Ducks, 1013
    Study of Foliage, Insects, etc., 1222

  Honthorst, G. van
    Peasants, 1444

  Hooch, Pieter de, p. 416
    Dutch House (courtyard) 794
    ---- (courtyard and porch), 835
    ---- (interior), 834
    Refusing the Glass, 2552

  Huchtenburgh, Johan van
    Battle Piece, 211

  Huysman, Jacob
    Isaak Walton, N.P.G., 125

  Huysmans, Cornelis
    Landscape, 954

  Huysum, Jan van, p. 416
    Vase with flowers, 796
    ---- (small), 1001


  Ingegno, L'
    Madonna and Child, 1220
    Virgin and Child, with Saints, 2484

  Ingres, J. A. D.
    Madame Malibran, 2218

  Isabey, Eugène
    Fish Market, Dieppe, 2715
    Grandfather's birthday, 2714

  Israels, Josef, p. 738
    Shipwrecked Mariner, 2732
    The Philosopher, 2713

  Italian School, 15th cent.
    Virgin and Child, 1456

  Italian School, 16th cent. (artists unknown)
    An Apostle, 272
    Portrait of Knight of Malta, 932
    _See also_ 1048 (p. xx)


  Jacopo Di Cione, p. xxi
    Crucifixion, 1468

  Janssens, C., p. 626
    Aglonius Voon (portrait), 1320
    Cornelia Remoens, 1321
    Portrait of a Lady, 2530

  Jardin, Karel du, p. 431
    Figures and Animals, 826
    Fording the Stream, 827
    Landscape with Cattle, 828
    Sheep and Goats, 985

  Jordaens, Jacob
    Baron de Linter, 1895

  Justus of Padua
    Coronation of Virgin, 701


  Keyser, T. de
    Merchant and Clerk, 212

  Koninck, P. de, p. 435
    View in Holland, 836
    View of the Scheldt, 974


  La Fargue
    Market-place, the Hague, 1918

  Lancret, Nicholas
    The Four Ages, 101-104

  Landini, Jacopo, p. 287
    Ascension of St. John, Evangelist, 580
    Holy Trinity and Annunciation, 580 A

  Lanini, Bernardino
    Holy Family, 700

  Leal. _See_ Valdes

  Le Brun, Madame Vigée
    Her own portrait, 1653

  Lely, Sir Peter
    Portrait of a Girl, 1016

  Le Nain
    A Portrait Group, 1425

  Leonardo da Vinci
    The Virgin of the Rocks, 1093

  Lepine, Stanislas
    Le Pont de la Tournelle, 2727

  Le Sueur, Eustache
    Holy Family, 1422

  Liberale de Verona, p. 548
    Death of Dido, 1336
    Virgin and Child, 1134

  Libri, Girolamo dai
    Madonna, Child, and St. Anne, 748

  Licinio, B.
    Man's Portrait, 1309

  Liesborn, Meister von
    Adoration of Magi, 258
    Annunciation, 256
    Christ on the Cross, 259
    Crucifixion, 262
    Purification, 257
    Sts. Cosmas, Damianus, and Virgin, 261
    Three Saints, 260
    ----, 254
    ----, 255

  Lievens, Jan
    Anna Maria van Schurman, 1095

  Lingelbach, Jan
    Hay Harvest, 837

  Lippi, Filippino, p. 257
    Angel Adoring, 927
    St. Francis in Glory, 598
    Virgin and Child, St. Jerome, etc., 293
    _See also_ 592, 1033, 1124, 1412 (pp. xix & xx)

  Lippi, Fra Filippo, p. 337
    Annunciation, 666
    Madonna and Child, 589
    St. John and six Saints, 667
    Vision of St. Bernard, 248
    _See also_ No. 586

  Lippo di Dalmasii
    Madonna and Child, 752

  Lochner, Stephen
    Three Saints, 705

  Lodovico da Parma
    Bishop Hugo of Grenoble, 692

  Lombard, Lambert
    The Deposition, 266

  Lombard School (artist unknown)
    Dead Christ, 219
    Portrait of a Young Man, 1052

  Longhi, Pietro, p. 526
    Andrea Tron (portrait), 1102
    Domestic Group, 1100
    Exhibition of Rhinoceros, 1101
    Fortune Teller, 1334

  Lorenzetti, Ambrogio
    Heads of Nuns, 1147

  Lorenzetti, Pietro
    Legendary Subject, 1113

  Lorenzo da San Severino
    Marriage of St. Catherine, 249

  Lorenzo, Il Monaco, p. 683
    Coronation of the Virgin, 1897
    St. John Gualberto, 2862
    Various Saints, 215, 216

  Lotto, Lorenzo, p. 363
    Family Group, 1047
    Portraits of Ag. and Nic. della Torre, 699
    Portrait of Prothonotary-Apostolic Juliano, 1105
    Virgin and Child, 2281

  Luciani. _See_ Piombo, Seb. del

  Lucidel, Nicolas
    Young Lady (portrait), 184

  Luini, Bernardino
    Christ and the Pharisees, 18
    Head of Christ, 2088

  Lundens, Gerrit
    "The Night Watch," 289

  Lyons. _See_ Corneille

  Lyversberg Passion, Master of the Presentation in the Temple, 706


  Mabuse, p. 327
    Adoration of the Kings, 2790
    Jacqueline de Bourgogne, 2211
    Magdalen, 2163
    Man and Wife (portraits), 1689
    Man's Portrait (small), 946
    ---- (with rosary), 656

  Macchiavelli, Zenobio
    Madonna and Child, 586

  Macrino d'Albo
    Group of Saints, 1200, 1201

  Maes, Nicolas, p. 171
    A. van Leuwenhoek, 2581
    Card Players, The, 1247
    Cradle, The, 153
    Dutch Housewife, The, 159
    Man's Portrait, 1277
    Servant, The Idle, 207

  Mainardi, Bastiano
    Virgin and Child, 2502

  Maître de Jean Perréal
    St. Clement and Donor, 2669

  Manni, Giannicola
    Annunciation, 1104

  Mansueti, Giovanni
    The Crucifixion, 1478

  Mantegna, Andrea, p. 236
    Agony in the Garden, 1417
    Samson and Delilah, 1145
    Summer and Autumn, 1125
    Triumph of Scipio, 902
    Virgin and Child, 274

  Mantegna, Francesco, p. 318
    "Noli me tangere," 639
    Resurrection, 1106
    The Holy Women at the Sepulchre, 1381

  Mantovano. _See_ Rinaldo

  Maratti, Carlo
    Cardinal Cerri, 174

  Marco d' Oggionno
    Madonna, 1149

  Margaritone
    Virgin and Child, etc., 564

  Marieschi, Jacopo
    Towns and Rivers, 2102, 2103

  Marinus van Romerswael
    Two Usurers, 944

  Maris, Jacob
    Drawbridge, 2710
    Mother and Child, 2709

  Marmion, Simon
    Choir of Angels, 1303
    St. Bertin, 1302

  Martino da Udine. _See_ Pellegrino

  Marziale, Marco, p. 419
    Circumcision, 803
    Madonna and Child Enthroned, 804

  Master of the Death of the Virgin
    Holy Family, 2603

  Matteo di Giovanni, p. 561
    Assumption of the Virgin, 1155
    "Ecco Homo!" 247
    St. Sebastian, 1461

  Mauve, Anton
    Watering Horses, 2711

  Mazo, J. B. Martinez del
    Man's Portrait, 1308

  Mazzola, Filippo
    Virgin and Child, 1416

  Mazzola, Francesco. _See_ Parmigiano

  Mazzolino da Ferrara, p. 179
    Christ Disputing, 1495
    Holy Family (St. Francis, etc.), 82
    ---- (St. Nicolas, etc.), 169
    Woman taken in Adultery, 641

  Meldolla. _See_ Schiavone

  Melone, Altobello
    Christ on the way to Emmaus, 753

  Melozzo da Forli. _See_ Forli

  Memlinc, Hans, p. 349
    Duke of Cleves, 2594
    Virgin and Child, 709
    Virgin and Child, Enthroned, 686

  ---- _ascribed to_
    St. John and St. Lawrence, 747

  Mengs, A. R.
    Virgin and Child, 1109 A (1099)

  Merian, Matthew, _the younger_
    Portrait of a Man, 1012

  Merigi. _See_ Caravaggio

  Messina. _See_ Antonello

  Metsu, Gabriel, p. 436
    Drowsy Landlady, The, 970
    Duet, The, 838
    Forge, The, 2591
    Music Lesson, The, 839
    Woman at Window, 2590

  Metsys, Quentin, p. 261
    Crucifixion, 715
    "Salvator Mundi," 295

  Meulen, A. F. van der
    A Hunting Party, 1447

  Michael Angelo, p. 410
    Dream of Human Life, 8
    Entombment, 790
    Madonna, etc., 809

  Michel, Georges
    Stormy Landscape, 2759
    Woodland Scene, 2258

  Michele da Verona
    Coriolanus, etc., 1214

  Miereveld, M. J. van
    Portrait of a Lady, 2292

  Mieris, Frans van, p. 436
    Lady and Parrot, 840
    Young Astrologer, 2589

  Mieris, Willem van
    Fish and Poultry Shop, 841

  Milanese School, 15th-16th century
    Head of John the Baptist, 1438
    Virgin and Child, 1300

  Millet, J. F.
    The Whisper, 2636

  Mocetto, Girolamo
    Massacre of the Innocents, 1239, 1240

  Modena. _See_ Barnaba

  Mola, P. F., p. 146
    St. John, 69
    The Repose, 160

  Molenaer, Jan Miense
    Musical Pastime, 1293

  Mompers, Joos
    Landscape, 1017

  Montagna, Bart., p. 419
    Madonna and Child (asleep), 1098
    ---- (with cherry), 802

  Morales, Luis de
    Virgin and Child, 1229

  Morando, Paolo, p. 379
    Madonna and Child, 777
    St. Roch with the Angel, 735

  More, Sir Antonio, p. 524
    Portrait of a Man, 1231

  ---- _ascribed to_
    Portrait of a Man, 1094
    Portrait of a Lady, 1860

  Moretto, Il, p. 267
    Angels, 2090, 2091
    Italian Nobleman, 299
    Italian Nobleman, 1025
    St. Bernardino of Siena, 625
    St. Hippolytus, 1165
    St. Jerome, 2093
    St. Joseph, 2092

  Morone, Domenico
    Scenes at a Tournament, 1211, 1212

  Morone, Francesco
    Madonna and Child, 285

  Moroni, p. 359
    Ecclesiastic (portrait), 1024
    Il Cavaliere, 2094
    Italian Lady (portrait), 1023
    Italian Nobleman (portrait), 1022
    ---- (Longford picture), 1316
    Lawyer (portrait), 742
    Tailor (portrait), 697

  Mostaert, Jan _See_ 713 (p. xx)

  Moucheron, Frédéric de, p. 437
    Garden Scene, 842
    Landscape, 1352

  Murillo, p. 79
    Boy Drinking, 1286
    Holy Family, 13
    Nativity of Virgin, 1257
    St. John and the Lamb, 176
    Spanish Peasant Boy, 74
    _For Copies from Murillo, see_ p. 755


  Neeffs, Pieter, p. 468
    Church Interiors, 924, 2205
    Vespers, 2206
    After Vespers, 2207

  Neer, Aart van der, p. 171
    Canal Scene, 732
    Dawn, 2283
    Evening Landscape, 152
    Frost Scene, 969
    ---- 1288
    Landscape, 2537
    Moonlight Scenes, 239, 2536
    River Scene, 2534

  Neer, Eglon H. van der
    Judith, 2535

  Netscher, Gaspard, p. 437
    Blowing Bubbles, 843
    1st Earl of Berkeley, 1332
    Lady and Spinning Wheel, 845
    Maternal Instruction, 844

  Niccolò da Foligno. _See_ Foligno

  Niccolò di Buonaccorso. _See_ Buonaccorso

  Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, p. xix
    Baptism of Christ, 579


  Ochtervelt, J., p. 699
    Lady at her Toilet, 2553
    Lady at a Spinet, 2143

  Oggionno. _See_ Marco

  Oost, Jacob van
    Portrait of a Boy, 1137

  Orcagna, p. 281
    Coronation of the Virgin (altar-piece), 569-578
    St. John the Baptist, etc., 581

  Oriolo, Giovanni
    Leonello, d'Este (portrait), 770

  Orley, Bernard von
    Madonna and Child, 714
    _See also_ 655

  Orsi, Lelio
    The Walk to Emmaus, 1466

  Ortolano, L'
    St. Sebastian, etc., 669

  Os, Jan van, p. 487
    Fruit and Flowers, 1380
    Fruit-piece, 1015

  Ostade, Adrian van, p. 438
    Alchymist, 846
    Cobbler, The, 2541
    Courtship, 2542
    Hurdy-Gurdy, 2540
    Man with a Jug, 2543

  Ostade, Isaak van, p. 440
    Cart, The, 2544
    Farmyard, 1347
    Frost Scene, 848
    Frozen River, 963
    Village Scene, 847


  Pacchia, Girolamo del
    Madonna and Child, 246

  Pacchiarotto, J.
    The Nativity, 1849

  Padovanino, p. 147
    Boy with a Bird, 933
    Cornelia and her Jewels, 70

  Palamedes, A.
    A Musical Party, 2575

  Palma Vecchio
    Portrait of a Poet, 636

  Palmezzano, Marco
    Entombment, 596

  Panini, Giov. Antonio
    A View in Rome, 138

  Pape, Abraham de
    Cottage Interior, 1221

  Parma. _See_ Lodovico

  Parmigiano
    Vision of St. Jerome, 33

  Passignano (Domenico Cresti)
    Portrait of Galileo, 2294

  Patinir, Joachim, p. 370
    Flight into Egypt, 1084
    River Scene, 1298
    St. Agnes adoring, 945
    St. Christopher, 716
    St. John on Patmos, 717
    Visitation, 1082
    _See also_ 715 (p. xx)

  Pellegrino da San Daniele
    Madonna and Child, 778

  Penni, Luca
    Holy Family, 2293

  Perugino, p. 249
    Adoration (fresco), 1441
    Baptism of Christ, 1431
    Virgin and Child (small), 181
    ---- (archangel), 288
    ---- (St. Francis, etc.), 1075

  Peruzzi, Baldassare, p. 212
    Adoration of Kings (drawing), 167
    ---- (picture), 218

  Pesellino, Francesco
    The Trinity, 727

  Piazza, Martino
    St. John Baptist, 1152

  Pier, Francesco Fiorentino, p. xxi
    Madonna and Child, 1199

  Piero della Francesca. _See_ Francesca

  Piero di Cosimo. _See_ Cosimo

  Pinturicchio, p. 355
    Madonna and Child, 703
    Return of Ulysses, 911
    St. Catherine of Alexandria, 693

  Piombo, Sebastiano del, p. 56
    Daughter of Herodias, 2493
    His own Portrait and Ippolito de' Medici, 20
    Holy Family, 1450
    Portrait of Lady as St. Agatha, 24
    Resurrection of Lazarus, 1

  Pippi. _See_ Romano, Giulio

  Pisano, Vittore, p. 401
    St. Anthony and St. George, 776
    Vision of St. Eustace, 1436

  Poel, Egbert van der
    Explosion at Delft, 1061

  Poelenburgh, Cornelis van
    Judgment of Paris, 209
    River, with women bathing, 955

  Pollajuolo, p. 255
    Apollo and Daphne, 928
    Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, 292

  ---- _School of_
    Portrait of a Lady, 585

  Ponte, Jacopo da. _See_ Bassano

  Pontormo, Jacopo da
    Joseph and his Brethren, 1131

  ---- _ascribed to_
    Portrait of a Man, 1150

  Poorter, W. van de
    Allegorical Subject, 1294

  Pordenone. _See_ 272

  Pot, Hendrik Gerritsz
    Convivial Party, 1278

  Potter, Paul, p. 440
    Cattle in Stormy Landscape, 2583
    Landscape with Cattle, 849
    Old Grey Hunter, 1009

  Potter, Pieter
    Stag Hunt, 1008

  Pourbus, Frans, _the younger_
    A Military Commander, 2295

  Poussin, Charles
    Pardon Day in Brittany, 810

  Poussin, Gaspard, p. 102
    Abraham and Isaac, 31
    Calling of Abraham, 1159
    Dido and Æneas, 95
    Italian Landscape, 161
    Land Storm, 36
    Landscapes, 2723, 2724
    View near Albano, 68
    ---- of La Riccia, 98

  Poussin, Nicolas, p. 116
    Bacchanalian Dance, 62
    Bacchanalian Festival, 42
    Cephalus and Aurora, 65
    Landscape, 2619
    Nursing of Bacchus, 39
    Phocion, 40
    Plague at Ashdod, 165
    Venus and Satyrs, 91

  Predis, Ambrogio de, p. 667
    Bona of Savoy, 2251
    Portrait of a Young Man, 1665
    Wings of the altar-piece No. 1093, 1661, 1662

  Previtali, Andrea, p. 358
    Madonna and Child (with monk), 695
    Madonna and Child, 2500
    Salvator Mundi, 2501

  Prevost, Jan, p. xx
    Virgin and Child, 713

  Pulzone, Scipione
    Portrait of a Cardinal, 1048


  Quast, Pieter
    Cavalier, 2856


  Raguineau, A.
    Portrait of a Youth, 1848

  Raibolini. _See_ Francia

  Raphael, p. 567
    Ansidei Madonna, 1171
    Bridgewater Madonna (copy), 929
    Garvagh Madonna, 744
    Madonna di San Sisto (tracing), 661
    Madonna di Sant' Antonio, p. 749
    Madonna of the Tower, 2069
    Pope Julius II. (portrait), 27
    St. Catherine of Alexandria, 168
    Vision of a Knight, 213

  Ravesteijn, A. van
    Lady's Portrait, 1423

  Rembrandt, p. 121
    Adoration of the Shepherds, 47
    Burgomaster, 1674
    Capuchin Friar (portrait), 166
    Christ before Pilate, 1400
    Christ taken down from the Cross, 43
    Diana Bathing, 2538
    His own Portrait (young), 672
    ---- (old), 221
    Jew Merchant (portrait), 51
    Jewish Rabbi (portrait), 190
    Landscape (Tobias and Angel), 72
    Man's Portrait (with collar), 850
    ---- (date 1659), 243
    ---- (with cap), 2539
    Old Lady's Portrait (dated 1634), 775
    ---- ("Burgomaster's Wife"), 1675
    Woman Bathing, 54
    Woman's Portrait (dated 1666), 237
    Woman taken in Adultery, 45
    _For copies from Rembrandt, see p. 754 and No. 289_

  Rembrandt, _School of_
    Christ blessing Little Children, 757

  Reni. _See_ Guido

  Rhine, _School of the,_ _See_ 1080, 1085 (p. xx)

  Ribera. _See_ Spagnoletto

  Ricci, Sebastiano, p. 441
    Esther and Ahasuerus, 2101
    Venus Sleeping, 851

  Rigaud, Hyacinthe, p. 459
    Cardinal Fleury, 903
    Lulli and Musicians, 2081

  Rimini, Giovanni Francesco da
    Madonna and Child, 2118

  Rinaldo Mantovano, p. 320
    Capture of Carthagena, etc., 643
    Rape of Sabines, etc., 644

  Roberti, Ercole de', p. 540
    Adoration of the Shepherds, 1411
    A Concert, 2486
    Israelites gathering Manna, 1217
    The Last Supper, 1127

  Robusti. _See_ Tintoretto

  Rokes, Hendrik. _See_ Sorgh

  Romanino, p. 264
    Portrait of a Man, 2096
    The Nativity, 297

  Romano, Giulio, p. 306
    Beatific Vision of the Magdalen, 225
    Infancy of Jupiter, 624

  Romerswael. _See_ Marinus

  Rosa, Salvator, p. 153
    Hagar, 2107
    Landscape and Figures, 1206
    Mercury and Woodman (landscape), 84
    River Scene, 935
    Tobias and Angel (landscape), 811

  Rosselli, Cosimo. _See_ No. 227

  Rossi, Francesco
    Charity, 652

  Rottenhammer. _See_ 659 (p. xix)

  Rousseau, P. E. Théodore, p. 707
    River Scene, 2439
    Sunset at Auvergne, 2635

  Rousseau, Philippe
    The Fish Market, 2480

  Rubens, p. 111
    Apotheosis of William the Silent, 187
    Birth of Venus (design for salver), 1195
    Brazen Serpent, 59
    Chapeau de Poil, 852
    Conversion of St. Bavon, 57
    Diana and Endymion, 2598
    Drawings, 853 _a-p_
    Holy Family, St. George, etc., 67
    Horrors of War, 279
    Judgment of Paris, 194
    Landscape (Château de Stein), 66
    ---- (sunset), 157
    Peace, 46
    Rape of the Sabines, 38
    Triumph of Julius Cæsar, 278
    Triumph of Silenus, 853
    _See also_ 680

  Ruysch, Rachel
    Flower-pieces, 1445, 1446

  Ruysdael, Jacob, p. 309
    Bleaching Ground, 44
    Broken Tree, 991
    Cottage and Haystack, 2565
    Cottage on a Hill, 2564
    Entrance to the Forest, 2563
    Forest Scene, 854
    Landscapes with Waterfall, 627, 628, 737
    Landscape with Ruins, 746
    Landscape with Torrent, 987
    Old Oak, 988
    Ruined Castle, 2562
    Shore at Scheveningen, 1390
    Skirts of a Forest, 2566
    Stormy Sea-piece, 2567
    View near Haarlem, 990, 2561
    Waterfall, 855
    Watermills, 986, 989

  Ruysdael, Salomon, p. 632
    Fishing in the River, 1439
    Landscape, 1344

  Ryckhaert, Martin
    Landscape, 1353


  Saenredam, Pieter, p. 683
    Interior of a Church, 1896
    Interior of St. Bavon, 2531

  St. Aubin, Augustin de
    J. B. Lalli (engraving), 2136

  St. Aubin, Gabriel de
    Une Parade, 2129

  Safleven, Herman
    Christ in Peter's Ship, 2062

  Salvi. _See_ Sassoferrato

  Salviati. _See_ Rossi

  San Daniele, Pellegrino da
    Madonna and Child, 778

  San Severino. _See_ Lorenzo

  Santa Croce. _See_ Girolamo

  Santi, Giovanni
    Madonna and Child, 751

  Sanzio. _See_ Raphael

  Sarto, Andrea del, p. 352
    His own Portrait, 690
    Holy Family, 17

  Sassetta, Stefano di Giovanni
    Heads of Angels, 1842 (p. xxi)

  Sassoferrato, p. 203
    Madonna and Child, 740
    Madonna in Prayer, 200

  Savoldo, Giov. Girolamo, p. 462
    Mary Magdalene at the Sepulchre, 1031
    _See also_ 1377

  Schalcken, Godfried, p. 202
    Candle Light, 999
    Duet, 998
    Lesbia and the Sparrow, 199
    Scouring the Kettle, 997

  Scheffer, Ary, p. 566
    St. Augustine and St. Monica, 1170
    Mrs. R. Hollond (portrait), 1169

  Schiavone, Andrea
    Jupiter and Semele, 1476

  Schiavone, Gregorio, p. 312
    Madonna and Child, 904
    Madonna Enthroned, 630

  Schongauer, Martin, _after_
    _See also_ 658 (p. xix)

  Schorel, Jan van, p. 372
    Portrait of a Lady, 721
    The "Repose," 720

  Segna di Buonaventura
    A Crucifixion, 567

  Sellaio, Jacopo del, p. 712
    Venus and Cupids, 916
    Virgin and Child, 2492

  Siberechts, Jan
    The Water Lane, 2130

  Sienese School (artists unknown)
    Marriage of the Virgin, 1317
    Virgin Enthroned, 1108

  Signorelli, Luca, p. 541
    Adoration of the Shepherds, 1776
    Circumcision, 1128
    Holy Family, 2488
    Nativity, 1133
    Triumph of Chastity, 910
    Virgin crowned by angels, 1847

  Snyders, Frans
    Fruit-piece, 1252

  Snyers, Pieter
    Still Life, 1401

  Sodoma, Il, p. 556
    "Ecce Homo!" 1337
    Madonna and Child, 1144

  Solario, Andrea da, p. 377
    Giro. Cr. Longono (portrait), 734
    Venetian Senator (portrait), 923

  Solario, Antonio da
    Holy Family, 2503

  Sorgh, Hendrick, p. 507
    Boors at Cards, 1055
    Two Figures drinking, 1056

  Spagna, Lo, p. 493
    Agony in the Garden, 1032

  ---- _ascribed to_
    Agony in the Garden, 1812
    "Ecce Homo!" 691

  Spagnoletto, p. 220
    Dead Christ, 235
    Shepherd with Lamb, 244

  Spanish School
    Adoration of Magi, p. 751
    Peasant and Child, 2526

  Spinello, Aretino, p. 288
    Rebel Angels (fresco fragments), 1216
    Two Apostles, 276
    _See also_ 581, 1468 (pp. xix, xxi)

  Steen, Jan, p. 445
    Grace before meat, 2558
    Interior, 1378
    Merry-makers, 2557
    Music Master, 856
    Oyster Feast, 2559
    Pedlar, 2556
    Skittle Players, 2560
    Terrace Scene, 1421
    Woman Asleep, 2555

  Steenwyck, Hendrick, p. 547
    An Interior, 1132
    Church Interiors, 1443, 2204

  Steenwyck, Herman
    Study of Still Life, 1256

  Stephan, Master. _See_ Lochner

  Storck, Abraham
    View on the Maas, 146


  Tacconi, Francesco
    Virgin Enthroned, 286

  Teniers, David, _the elder_, p. 476
    Conversation, 950
    Playing at Bowls, 951
    Rocky Landscape, 949

  Teniers, _the younger_, p. 172
    Backgammon, 242
    Boors Regaling, 158
    Card Players, 2600
    Château at Perck, 817
    Country Scene, 861
    Dives in Hell, 863
    Four Seasons, 857-860
    Money Changers, 155
    Music Party, 154
    Old Woman peeling Pears, 805
    Old Woman reading, 2601
    Surprise, 862
    Toper, 953
    Village Fête, 952
    Visit to the Doctor, 2599

  Terburg, Gerard, p. 447
    Guitar Lesson, 864
    Man's Portrait, 1399
    Peace of Münster, 896

  Theotocopuli, Domenico, p. 533
    Christ in the Temple, 1457
    St. Jerome, 1122

  Tiepolo, Giov. Battista, p. 577
    Deposition, 1333
    Designs for Altar-pieces, 1192, 1193
    Marriage of Barbarossa, 2100
    Virgin and Child, 2513

  Tintoretto, p. 84
    Christ washing Disciples' Feet, 1130
    St. George and the Dragon, 16
    The Milky Way, 1313

  Tisio. _See_ Garofalo

  Titian, p. 63
    Bacchus and Ariadne, 35
    Holy Family (landscape), 4
    Madonna and Child, St. Catherine, etc., 635
    "Noli me Tangere," 270
    Portrait of Ariosto, 1944
    Venus and Adonis, 34
    _See also_ 636 (p. xix)

  ---- _School of_
    Concert, 3
    Rape of Ganymede, 32
    Tribute Money, 224

  Treviso. _See_ Girolamo

  Troy, J. F. de
    "La Main Chaude," 2216

  Tura, Cosimo, p. 399
    Madonna and Child, 772
    St. Jerome in the Desert, 773
    The Virgin Mary, 905

  Tuscan School. _See_ 1842 (p. xxi)


  Ubertini. _See_ Bacchiacca

  Uccello, Paolo
    Battle of Sant' Egidio, 583

  Ugolino da Siena, p. 576
    Betrayal of Christ, 1188
    Procession to Calvary, 1189

  Umbrian School (artists unknown)
    Griselda, 912-914
    Madonna and Child, 702
    Marcus Curtius, 1304
    Portrait of Raphael (?), 2510
    St. Catherine, 646
    St. Ursula, 647
    _See also_ 585 (p. xix)

  Unknown. (_See under_ Dutch, Ferrarese, Flemish, Florentine,
    German, Greek, Italian, Milanese, Sienese, Tuscan, Umbrian,
    Venetian, and Veronese)


  Valdes, Leal, Juan de
    Assumption of Virgin, 1291

  Vallin, Jacques Antoine
    Dr. Forlenze (portrait), 2288

  Vannucci, Pietro. _See_ Perugino

  Varotari. _See_ Padovanino

  Vecellio. _See_ Titian

  Velazquez, p. 196
    Admiral Pulido Pareja, 1315
    Christ at the Column, 1148
    Christ in the House of Martha, 1375
    Dead Warrior ("El Orlando Muerto"), 741
    Philip IV. (portrait bust), 745
    ---- (portrait; full length), 1129
    Venus and Cupid, 2057
    Wild Boar Hunt, 197
    _For copies from Velazquez, see_ p. 752
    _See also_ 1376, 1434 (p. xxi)

  ---- _ascribed to_
    Betrothal, 1434
    Duel in the Prado (sketch), 1376

  Velde, Adrian van de, p. 449
   Bay Horse, 983
    Farm Cottage, 867
    Ford, 868
    Forest Scene, 982
    Frost Scene, 869
    Landscape, 1348
    Landscape and Cattle, 984
    The Little Farm, 2572

  Velde, Jan van de
    Still Life, 1255

  Velde, Willem van de, _the younger_, p. 169
    Calm at Sea, 149, 2573
    Calm at Sea (Sir R. Peel's), 874
    Coast Scene, 871
    Coast of Scheveningen, 873
    Dutch Ships of War, 980
    Gale, 876
    Gale at Sea, 150
    Light Breeze, 875
    River Scene, 978
    Sea Piece, 977
    Shipping, 979
    ---- in a Calm, 870
    ---- off the Coast, 872
    Storm at Sea, 981
    Windy Day, 2573

  Venetian School (artists unknown)
    Adoration of the Shepherds, 1377
    Landscape with Nymphs, 1695
    Portrait of a Lady, 595
    Portraits of Senators, 1489, 1490
    _See also_ 1121 (p. xx)

  Veneziano, Bartolommeo, p. 249
    Portrait of a Lady, 2507
    Portrait of Ludovico Martinengo, 287

  Veneziano, Domenico, p. 395
    Heads of Saints, 766
    Madonna and Child, 1215

  Venusti, Marcello, p. 578
    Christ and the Traders, 1194
    Virgin and Child, etc., 1227

  Vermeer, Jan, p. 636
    Young Lady at the Virginals, 1383
    A Lady at the Virginals, 2568
    _See also_ 1699 (p. xxi)

  ---- _attributed to_
    A Family Group, 2764
    The Lesson, 1699

  Vermeulen, Andries
    Scene on the Ice, 1850

  Vernet, Claude Joseph, p. 222
    Castle of Sant' Angelo, 236
    Mediterranean Seaport, 1393

  Vernet, Horace
    Napoleon I. (portrait), 1285

  Veronese, Paolo, p. 95
    Adoration of the Magi, 268
    Consecration of St. Nicholas, 26
    Family of Darius, 294
    Happy Union, 1326
    Magdalen and her Jewels, 931
    Rape of Europa, 97
    Respect, 1325
    Scorn, 1324
    Unfaithfulness, 1318
    Vision of St. Helena, 1041

  Veronese, Paolo, _after_
    _See also_ 97 (p. xix)

  Veronese School (artist unknown)
    The Clemency of Trajan, 1135, 1136

  Verrocchio, Andrea
    Virgin Adoring, 296

  Victoors, Jan
    Village Cobbler, 1312

  Vinci. _See_ Leonardo

  Vivarini, Alvise, p. 682
    Madonna and Child, 1872
    Man in Black, 2095
    Portrait of a Youth, 2509
    Venetian Gentleman, 2672

  Vivarini, Antonio, p. 396
    Sts. Francis and Mark, 1284
    Sts. Peter and Jerome, 768

  Vivarini, Bartolommeo
    Virgin and Child, 284

  Vliet, Willem van der
    Portrait of a Jesuit, 1168


  Walscappelle, Jacob
    Flowers, Insects, etc., 1002

  Weenix, Jan, _the younger_
    Dead Game, 238

  Weenix, Jan Baptist
    Hunting Scene, 1096

  Weier, J.
    Battle Scene, 1470

  Werden, Meister van
    Four Saints, 250
    ---- 251
    Mass of St. Hubert, 253

  Werff, Adrian van der
    His own portrait, 1660

  Wet, Jan de
    Landscape, 1342

  Weyden, Roger van der, p. 332
    "Ecce Homo!" 712
    Mater Dolorosa, 711
    Portrait of a Lady, 1433
    _See also_ 654, 664

  Wils, Jan
    Rocky Landscape, 1007

  Witte, Emanuel, de
    Church Interior, 1053

  Wouwerman, J.
    Landscape, 1345

  Wouwerman, Philips, p. 453
    Battle Piece, 976
    Bohemians, 2282
    Gathering Faggots, 881
    Interior of Stable, 879
    Landscape, 882
    "Pretty Milkmaid," 878
    Sandbank, 973
    Sea Shore, 880
    Shoeing a Horse, 2554
    Stag Hunt, 975
    The Bohemians, 2282
    Vedettes on the Watch, 1060

  Wynants, Jan, p. 454
    Landscape (crippled beggar), 883
    ---- (sand dunes), 884
    ---- (woman on donkey), 971
    ---- (sportsman and dog), 972
    Sandy Lane, 2533
    Woman driving Sheep, 2532


  Ysenbrandt, Adrian
    St. Mary Magdalen,2585


  Zaganelli
    St. Sebastian, 1092

  Zais, Giuseppe, p. 607
    River Scene, 1297
    Rural Landscape, 1296

  Zampieri. _See_ Domenichino

  Zoppo, Marco
    Deposition in the Tomb, 590

  Zuccarelli
    Gate of Tower, 2086
    Pastoral Landscape, 2087

  Zurbaran, Francisco, p. 216
    Adoration of the Shepherds, 232
    Franciscan Monk, 230
    St. Margaret, 1930

[Illustration]




APPENDIX II

INDEX LIST OF PICTURES


In this Index all the pictures (of Foreign Schools) belonging to the
National Gallery are enumerated in the order of the numbers given to
them on the frames and in the Official Catalogues.

Following the title and painter of each picture, there has been in
previous editions of the _Handbook_ a reference to the room in the
Gallery in which the picture was hung; but as the Gallery is now, and
will for some time be, under extensive rearrangement (see above, p.
xxv), these references are for the present omitted.

Several pictures belonging to the National Gallery have, however, been
_removed on loan_ to other institutions (under a Treasury Minute,
1861, and the "National Gallery Loan Act," 1883). These pictures are
distinguished in the Index by their titles being printed in _italics_;
whilst the name of the institution, or (in the case of provincial
galleries) the name of the town in which they are now to be seen is
stated in the fourth column.

In the next two columns, the manner and date of each picture's
acquisition are given. The names are those of the persons from whom the
pictures were purchased, or by whom they were given or bequeathed.

In the last column, the prices paid for all the purchased pictures
are given. Except where otherwise specified, the funds out of which
pictures were purchased have been provided by Parliamentary Grants. The
Trustees have at their disposal other funds derived from the Clarke,
Lewis, Mackrell, Temple West, and Walker bequests. (The Wheeler bequest
is available for the purchase of English pictures only.) The letter
C., L., M., or W. before the price in the last column denotes that the
funds were derived from one or other of those bequests.

The dates of the appointment of successive Keepers or Directors are
also given at their proper places in the Index, so that the curious
reader may discover the use made by these officers of the funds at
their disposal. It should, however, be remembered that up to 1855 the
responsibility for purchases rested rather with the Trustees and the
Treasury than with the Keeper.

The following is a summary of the cost of the pictures (both
British[265] and Foreign) purchased up to the end of 1906:--

  /================================================\
  |  PURCHASED out of PARLIAMENTARY GRANTS.        |
  |------------------------------------------------+
  |Pictures--                     £    _s._ _d._   |
  |------------------------------------------------+
  | 38 (Angerstein Collection)      57,000  0  0   |
  | 31 (Lombardi-Baldi "   )         7,035  0  0   |
  | 33 (Beaucousin     "   )         9,205  3  0   |
  | 77 (Peel)          "            75,000  0  0   |
  |405 (Smaller Purchases)         332,073  8  5   |
  |  2 (Blenheim Collection)        87,500  0  0   |
  |  3 (Longford    "      )        25,000  0  0   |
  |  4 (Lord Northbrook)             8,000  0  0   |
  |  2 (Saumarez Rembrandts)        14,050  0  0   |
  |  2 (Lord Northampton)           10,000  0  0   |
  |  2 (Genoa Vandycks)             25,000  0  0   |
  |  1 (Lord Talbot de Malahide)    25,000  0  0   |
  |---                            --------------   |
  |601 pictures at a cost of    £  683,863 11  5   |
  |================================================|
  |  PURCHASED out of PRIVATE BEQUESTS, ETC.       |
  |------------------------------------------------+
  |Pictures--                        £   _s._ _d._ |
  | 38           Clarke Fund        11,929  8  2   |
  | 29           Lewis  "            8,666  9  0   |
  | 21           Walker "           10,097 17  6   |
  | 11           Wheeler "           2,940  0  0   |
  |   Grant from Lewis Fund towards                |
  |     purchase of No. 1247           151 10  0   |
  |   Gifts for Longford Pictures   30,000  0  0   |
  |    "    "   Rembrandts           1,000  0  0   |
  |   Titian's Ariosto              21,000  0  0   |
  |  1 Velasquez' Venus             45,000  0  0   |
  |---                            --------------   |
  |100 pictures at a cost of    £  130,785  5  2   |
  \================================================/

It will be seen from this table that 701 pictures in all have been
purchased at a total cost of £814,648: 16: 7, an average of £1162 per
picture.

      A. Mr. Angerstein's Collection (38 pictures) was purchased in
      one lot for £57,000.

      (1) Nos. 9, 35, and 62 were purchased together for £9000.

      (2) Nos. 10 and 15 were purchased together for £11,500.

      (3) Nos. 13 and 59 were purchased together for £7350.

      (4) The Krüger Collection (64 pictures) was purchased in 1854
      by, and on the responsibility of, the then Chancellor of the
      Exchequer (Mr. Gladstone), for £2800. Seventeen of them were
      originally hung in the Gallery; 10 were sent to Dublin; and
      the remaining 37 were sold at Christie's in 1857, and realised
      £249: 8_s._, or £6: 14_s._ each. Of the 17 originally hung in
      the Gallery, all but 4 were weeded out in 1862, the rejected
      pictures being divided between Dublin and the Science and Art
      Department.

      (5) Nos. 280, 285, and 286, together with five others deposited
      in the National Gallery of Ireland, and two which were sold
      at Christie's for £130: 9_s._, were purchased from the Baron
      Galvagna, Venice, for £2189: 16: 10.

      (6) The Lombardi-Baldi Collection (Florence), 31 pictures, was
      purchased in one lot for £7035.

      (7) The Beaucousin Collection of 46 pictures (13 of which were
      not kept for the Gallery) was purchased at Paris in one lot for
      £9205: 3: 1.

      (8) The Peel Collection of 77 pictures and 18 drawings was
      purchased in one lot for £75,000.

  Key for Where Hung:
  B = Bootle                     C = Chester          E = Edinburgh  D = Dublin
  G = National Gallery           K = South Kensington N = Newport    O = Oldham
  P = National Portrait Gallery  R = Greenock         S = Stockport  X = Exeter

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |                                                                             |
  |           _Mr. William Sebuier was appointed Keeper in 1824._               |
  |    |                    |                | |              |    |            |
  |   1|Raising of Lazarus. |Seb. del Piombo |G|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |   2|Cephalus and Procris|Claude          |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  |   3|A Concert           |_Sch. of_ Titian|"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  |   4|Holy Family         |Titian          |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Carr     |    |            |
  |   5|Seaport             |Claude          |"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |   6|Cave of Adullam     |  "             |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Carr     |    |            |
  |   7|Group of Heads      |_Aft._          |"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |    |                    |  Correggio     | |              |    |            |
  |   8|Dream of Human Life |Michael Angelo  |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Carr     |    |            |
  |   9|"Domine quo vadis"  |An. Carracci    |"|P. Hamlet     |1826|   (1)      |
  |  10|Mercury, Venus,     |Correggio       |"|P. Ld.        |1834|   (2)      |
  |    |  and Cupid         |                | |   Londonderry|    |            |
  |  11|St. Jerome          |Guido           |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Carr     |    |            |
  |  12|Isaac and Rebecca   |Claude          |"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |  13|Holy Family         |Murillo         |"|P. Bulkeley   |1837|   (3)      |
  |    |                    |                | |     Owen     |    |            |
  |  14|Seaport             |Claude          |"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |  15|"Ecce Homo!"        |Correggio       |G|P. Ld.        |1834|   (2)      |
  |    |                    |                | |  Londonderry |    |            |
  |  16|St. George & Dragon |Tintoretto      |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Carr      |    |            |
  |  17|Holy Family         |Andrea del Sarto|"|B.      "     |  " |            |
  |  18|Christ and the      |B. Luini        |"|B.      "     |1831|            |
  |    | Pharisees          |                | |              |    |            |
  |  19|Narcissus and Echo  |Claude          |"|G. Sir. G.    |1826|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Beaumont   |    |            |
  |  20|Ippolito de' Medici |S. del Piombo   |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |  and S. del Piombo |                | |    Carr      |    |            |
  |  21|Portrait of a Lady |Cristofano Allori|"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  |  22|Dead Christ         |Guercino        |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |  23|La Vierge au Panier |Correggio       |"|P. M. Perrier |1825|  £3,800    |
  |  24|Portrait of a Lady  |Seb. del Piombo |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Carr     |    |            |
  |  25|St. John in the     |An. Carracci    |"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |    |  Wilderness        |                | |              |    |            |
  |  26|St. Nicholas        |P. Veronese     |"|G. Brit. Inst.|1826|            |
  |  27|Julius II           |Raphael         |"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |  28|Susannah            |L. Carracci     |"|P.     "      |  " |    "       |
  |  29|"Madonna del Gatto" |Baroccio        |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Carr      |    |            |
  |  30|St. Ursula          |Claude          |"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |  31|Sacrifice of Isaac  |G. Poussin      |"|P.     "      |  " |    "       |
  |  32|Rape of Ganymede    |_Sch. of_ Titian|"|P.     "      |  " |    "       |
  |  33|Vision of St. Jerome|Parmigiano      |"|G. Brit. Inst.|1826|            |
  |  34|Venus and Adonis    |Titian          |"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |  35|Bacchus & Ariadne   |  "             |"|P. Hamlet     |1826|   (1)      |
  |  36|Land Storm          |G. Poussin      |"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |  37|Group of Heads      |_Aft._ Correggio|"|P.     "      |  " |    "       |
  |  38|Rape of the Sabines |Rubens          |"|P.     "      |  " |    "       |
  |  39|Nursing of Bacchus  |N. Poussin      |"|B. G. J.      |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Cholmondeley|    |            |
  |  40|Landscape: Phocion  |  "             |"|G. Sir G.     |1826|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Beaumont   |    |            |
  |  41|Death of Peter      |_Asc. to_       |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |  Martyr            |   Cariani      | |     Carr     |    |            |
  |  42|Bacchanalian Scene  |N. Poussin      |"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |  43|Deposition          |Rembrandt       |"|G. Sir G.     |1826|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Beaumont   |    |            |
  |  44|Bleaching Ground    |J. Ruysdael     |"|B. Ld.        |1847|            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Farnborough |    |            |
  |[266]44|_Charity_        |Giulio Romano   |K|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Carr     |    |            |
  |  45|Woman taken in      |Rembrandt       |G|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |    |   Adultery         |                | |              |    |            |
  |  46|Blessings of Peace  |Rubens          |"|G. Lord       |1828|            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Stafford    |    |            |
  |  47|Adoration of the    |Rembrandt       |"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |    |   Shepherds        |                | |              |    |            |
  |  48|Tobias & the Angel  |Domenichino     |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Carr      |    |            |
  |  49|Portrait of Rubens  |Van Dyck        |"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |  50|St. Ambrose and     |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |            |
  |    |  Theodosius        |                | |              |    |            |
  |  51|Jew Merchant        |Rembrandt       |"|G. Sir G.     |1826|            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Beaumont    |    |            |
  |  52|Portrait of         |Van Dyck        |"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |    |  Gevartius         |                | |              |    |            |
  |  53|Evening Landscape   |A. Cuyp         |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  |  54|Woman Bathing       |Rembrandt       |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Carr      |    |            |
  |  55|Death of Procris    |Claude          |"|G. Sir G.     |1826|            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Beaumont    |    |            |
  |  56|Landscape           |An. Carracci    |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Carr      |    |            |
  |  57|St. Bavon           |Rubens          |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |  58|Study of Trees      |Claude          |"|G. Sir G.     |1826|            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Beaumont    |    |            |
  |  59|The Brazen Serpent  |Rubens          |"|P. Bulkeley   |1837|   (3)      |
  |    |                    |                | |    Owen      |    |            |
  |  60|_Tower of Babel_    |Leandro         |D|B. Col. Ollney|  " |            |
  |    |                    |   Bassano      | |              |    |            |
  |  61|Landscape           |Claude          |G|G. Sir G.     |1826|            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Beaumont    |    |            |
  |  62|Bacchanalian Dance  |N. Poussin      |"|P. Hamlet     |  " |   (1)      |
  |  63|Landscape           |An. Carracci    |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Carr      |    |            |
  |  64|Return of the Ark   |S. Bourdon      |"|G. Sir G.     |1826|            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Beaumont    |    |            |
  |  65|Cephalus and Aurora |N. Poussin      |"|B. G. J.      |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Cholmondeley|    |            |
  |  66|Landscape           |Rubens          |"|G. Sir G.     |1826|            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Beaumont    |    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |  67|Holy Family         |Rubens          |G|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |  68|View near Albano    |G. Poussin      |"|B.}Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |  69|St. John Preaching  |P. F. Mola      |"|B.}   Carr    |  " |            |
  |  70|Cornelia & her      |Padovanino      |"|B. Col. Ollney|1837|            |
  |    |    jewels          |                | |              |    |            |
  |  71|Muleteers           |J. Both         |"|G. Sir G.     |1826|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Beaumont |    |            |
  |  72|Tobias & the Angel  |Rembrandt       |"|B.}Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |  73|Conversion of St.   |_Asc. to_ Ercole|"|B.}  Carr     |1831|            |
  |    |    Paul            |di Giulio Grandi| |              |    |            |
  |  74|Spanish Boy         |Murillo         |"|G. M. Zachary |1826|            |
  |  75|St. George & Dragon |Domenichino     |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Carr     |    |            |
  |  76|Christ's Agony      |_Aft._ Correggio|"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |  77|Stoning of Stephen  |Domenichino     |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Carr     |    |            |
  |  78|_Landscape_         |Berchem         |B|B. R. Frankum |1861|            |
  |  81|St. Augustine       |Garofalo        |G|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |  82|Holy Family         |Mazzolino       |"|B.   Carr     |  " |            |
  |  83|_Phineus_           |N. Poussin      |D|G. Gen.       |1837|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Thornton |    |            |
  |  84|Mercury & Woodman   |Salvator Rosa   |G|P. George Byng|  " |  £1,680    |
  |  85|St. Jerome          |Domenichino     |"|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Carr     |    |            |
  |  86|The Entombment      |L. Carracci     |"|B. Col. Ollney|1837|            |
  |  87|_Perseus_           |Guido           |D|G. William IV.|1836|            |
  |  88|Erminia             |An. Carracci    |G|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |  89|_Portraits_         |Sustermans      |D|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  |  90|_Venus and Graces_  |Guido           |E|G. William IV.|1836|            |
  |  91|Sleeping Venus      |N. Poussin      |G|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Carr     |    |            |
  |  92|_Cupid and Psyche_  |Aless. Veronese |K|B. Col. Ollney|1837|            |
  |  93|Silenus             |An. Carracci    |G|B. Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Carr     |    |            |
  |  94|Bacchus and Silenus |  "             |"|P. Angerstein |1824|    A       |
  |  95|Dido and Æneas      |G. Poussin      |"|B.}Rev. W. H. |1831|            |
  |  96|_Ecce Homo!_        |_Copy of_ S.    |K|  } Carr      |  " |            |
  |    |                    |    Correggio   | |              |    |            |
  |  97|Rape of Europa      |P. Veronese     |G|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |  98|La Riccia           |G. Poussin      |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 101|Infancy             |Lancret         |"|B. Col. Ollney|1837|            |
  | 102|Youth               |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 103|Manhood             |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 104|Age                 |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 125|Izaak Walton        |Huysman         |P|B. Rev. Dr.   |1838|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Hawes    |    |            |
  | 127|View in Venice      |Canaletto       |G|G. Sir G.     |1826|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Beaumont |    |            |
  | 134|_Landscape_         |Decker          |X|B. Col. Ollney|1837|            |
  | 135|Landscape with Ruins|Canaletto       |G|G.    "       |  " |            |
  | 137|Landscape           |Jan van Goyen   |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 138|Ancient Ruins       |Panini          |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 140|_Portrait of a Lady_|Van der Helst   |R|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 141|_Palace of Dido_    |Steenwyck       |D|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 145|_Portrait of a Man_ |_Asc. to_ Helst |E|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 146|View on the Maas    |Abraham Storck  |G|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 147|Cephalus and Aurora |Ag. Carracci    |"|G.}Ld.        |  " |            |
  | 148|Galatea             |  "             |"|G.}  Ellesmere|  " |            |
  | 149|A Calm              |W. van de Velde |"|B.}Ld.        |1838|            |
  | 150|A Gale              |  "             |"|B.}Farnborough|  " |            |
  | 151|River Scene         |Jan van Goyen   |"|B. Mrs. Hodges|1852|            |
  | 151|Leda[267]           |P. F. Mola      |"|B.}Ld.        |1838|            |
  | 152|Evening Landscape   |A. van der Neer |"|B.}Farnborough|  " |            |
  | 153|The Little Nurse    |Maes            |"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 154|A Music Party       |D. Teniers (jr.)|"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 155|Money-changers      |  "             |"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 156|Study of Horses     |Van Dyck        |"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 157|Landscape           |Rubens          |"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 158|Boors Regaling      |D. Teniers (jr.)|"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 159|Dutch Housewife     |Maes            |"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  | 160|A "Riposo"          |P. F. Mola      |G|B.}Ld.        |1838|            |
  | 161|Landscape           |G. Poussin      |"|B.}Farnborough|  " |            |
  | 163|View in Venice      |Canaletto       |"|B.     "      |  " |            |
  | 164|_Holy Family_       |Jordaens        |D|G.}D. of.     |  " |            |
  | 165|Plague at Ashdod    |N. Poussin      |G|G.}  Northumbd|  " |            |
  | 166|Capuchin Friar      |Rembrandt       |"|G.     "      |  " |            |
  | 167|Adoration of Magi   |B. Peruzzi      |"|G. Lord Vernon|1839|            |
  | 168|St. Catherine       |Raphael         |"|P. Beckford   |  " |}           |
  | 169|Holy Family         |Mazzolino       |"|P.   "        |  " |} £7,350    |
  | 170|    "               |Garofalo        |"|P.   "        |  " |}           |
  | 172|Supper at Emmaus    |Caravaggio      |"|G. Lord Vernon|  " |            |
  | 173|Male Portrait       |Il Bassano      |"|G. H. G.      |  " |            |
  | 174|A Cardinal          |C. Maratti      |"|G.   Knight   |  " |            |
  | 175|_John Milton_       |Van der Plaas   |P|G. C. Lofft   |  " |            |
  | 176|St. John & the Lamb |Murillo         |G|P.}Sir S.     |1840|  2,100     |
  | 177|The Magdalen        |Guido Reni      |"|P.}  Clark    |  " |    430 10  |
  | 179|Virgin and Child    |Francia         |"|P. Duke of    |1841|} 3,500     |
  | 180|A Pietà             |  "             |"|P.   Lucca"   |  " |}           |
  | 181|Virgin and Child    |Perugino        |"|P. Beckford   |  " |    800     |
  | 184|A Young Lady        |N. Lucidel      |"|P. Col.       |1858|    200     |
  |                                                  Baillie                    |
  |       _Sir C. L. (then Mr.) Eastlake was appointed Keeper in 1843._         |
  |                                                                             |
  | 186|Portraits of Jan    |Jan van Eyck    |G|P. General Hay|1842|    630     |
  |    |Arnolfini & Wife    |                | |              |    |            |
  | 187|Apotheosis of       |Rubens          |"|P. Lord Eldin |1843|    200     |
  |    |William the Taciturn|                | |              |    |            |
  | 189|The Doge Loredano   |Gio. Bellini    |"|P. Beckford   |1844|    630     |
  | 190|A Jewish Rabbi      |Rembrandt       |"|P. J. Harman  |  " |    473 11  |
  | 191|Christ and St. John |Guido Reni      |"|P.   "        |  " |    409 10  |
  | 192|His own Portrait    |Gerard Dou      |"|P.   "        |  " |    131 5   |
  | 193|Lot & his Daughters |Guido Reni      |"|P. Penrice    |  " |  1,680     |
  | 194|Judgment of Paris   |Rubens          |"|P.  "         |  " |  4,200     |
  | 195|A Medical Professor |German _School_ |"|P. Rochard    |1845|    630     |
  | 196|Susannah & Elders   |Guido Reni      |"|P. Penrice    |  " |  1,260     |
  | 197|Wild Boar Hunt      |Velazquez       |"|P. Lord Cowley|1846|  2,200     |
  | 198|St. Anthony         |An. Carracci    |"|P. Ld.        |  " |    787 10  |
  |    |                    |                | |     Dartmouth|    |            |
  | 199|Lesbia              |Schalcken       |"|B. R. Simmons |  " |            |
  | 200|Madonna             |Sassoferrato    |"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 201|_Seaport_           |C. J. Vernet    |D|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 202|Domestic Poultry    |Hondecoeter     |G|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 203|_Conventual Charity_|Van Harp        |C|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 204|_Dutch Shipping_    |Bakhuizen       |"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 205|Itinerant Musicians |Dietrich        |G|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 206|Head of a Girl      |Greuze          |"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 207|The Idle Servant    |Maes            |"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 208|_Landscape_         |Breenberg       |R|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 209|Judgment of Paris   |Both &          |G|B.   "        |  " |            |
  |    |                    |    Poelenburgh | |              |    |            |
  | 210|View in Venice      |Guardi          |"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 211|A Battle            |Huchtenburg     |"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 212|Merchant and Clerk  |De Keyser       |"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  |                                                                             |
  |           _Mr. Thomas Uwins, R.A., was appointed Keeper in 1847._           |
  |                                                                             |
  | 213|Vision of a Knight  |Raphael         |G|P. Rev. T.    |1847|  1,050     |
  |    |                    |                | |     Egerton  |    |            |
  | 214|Coronation of Virgin|Guido Reni      |"|B. W. Wells   |  " |            |
  | 215|Saints              |{ Lorenzo       |"|G. W.         |1848|            |
  | 216|    "               |{   Monaco      |"|G.   Coningham|  " |            |
  | 218|Adoration of Magi   |B. Peruzzi      |"|G. E.         |1849|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Higginson|    |            |
  | 219|Dead Christ         |Lombard _School_|"|G. Sir W. C.  |  " |            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Trevelyan|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |[268]|Landscape with     |G. Poussin      |G|G. Philip     |1849|            |
  |    |  Figures           |                | |     Pusey    |    |            |
  |[268]|    "              |  "             |"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 221|His own Portrait    |Rembrandt       |"|P. Visct.     |1851|  £430 10   |
  | 222|A Man's Portrait    |Jan van Eyck    |"|P.   Midleton |  " |   365      |
  | 223|A Gale              |Bakhuizen       |"|B. C. L.      |  " |            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Bredel    |    |            |
  | 224|The Tribute Money   |_Sch. of_ Titian|"|P. Marshal    |1852| 2,604      |
  |    |                    |                | |    Soult     |    |            |
  | 225|Vision of the       |Giulio Romano   |"|G. Ld.        |  " |            |
  |    |  Magdalen          |                | |    Overstone |    |            |
  | 226|Virgin and Child    |_Sch. of_       |"|P. J. H. Brown|1855|   331 13   |
  |    |                    |   Botticelli   | |              |    |            |
  | 227|S. Jerome           |Botticini       |"|P. Conte      |  " |   114 17   |
  |    |                    |                | |      Ricasoli|    |            |
  | 228|Christ  and  the    |Il Bassano      |"|G. P. L. Hinds|1853|            |
  |    | Money-changers     |                | |              |    |            |
  | 230|A Franciscan Monk   |Zurbaran        |"|P. King Louis |  " |   265      |
  | 232|Adoration of the    |  "             |"|P.    Philippe|  " | 2,050      |
  |    | Shepherds          |                | |              |    |            |
  | 234|Warrior  adoring    |Catena          |"|P. S. Woodburn|  " |   525      |
  |    | Infant Christ      |                | |              |    |            |
  | 235|Dead Christ         |Spagnoletto     |"|G. D. Barclay |  " |            |
  | 236|Castle of St. Angelo|C. J. Vernet    |"|G. Lady       |  " |            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Simpkinson|    |            |
  | 237|A Woman's Portrait  |Rembrandt       |"|B. Lord       |1854|            |
  | 238|Dead Game           |Jan Weenix, jr. |"|B.    Colborne|  " |            |
  | 239|Moonlight Scene     |A. van der Neer |"|B.       "    |  " |            |
  | 240|Crossing the Ford   |Berchem         |"|B.       "    |  " |            |
  | 242|Game of  Backgammon |D. Teniers (jr.)|"|B.       "    |  " |            |
  | 243|An Old Man          |Rembrandt       |"|B.       "    |  " |            |
  | 244|Shepherd with Lamb  |Spagnoletto     |"|B.       "    |  " |            |
  | 245|A Senator           |Hans Baldung    |"|P. M. de      |  " |   145  7   |
  | 246|Madonna and Child   |Pacchia         |"|P.  Bammeville|  " |    92  8   |
  | 247|"Ecce Homo!"        |M. di Giovanni  |"|P.       "    |  " |    55 13   |
  | 248|Vision of S. Bernard|Filippo Lippi   |"|P.       "    |  " |   400      |
  | 249|Marriage of S.      |Lorenzo di S.   |"|P.       "    |  " |   393 15   |
  |    | Catherine of Siena |  Severino      | |              |    |            |
  | 250|Four Saints         |Meister v.      |"|P. Herr Krüger|  " |      (4)   |
  | 251|    "               |      Werden    |"|P.     Minden |  " |    "       |
  | 252|Conversion of S.    |  "             |"|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  |    |     Hubert         |                | |              |    |            |
  | 253|Mass of S. Hubert   |  "             |"|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  | 254|Three Saints        |Meister v.      |"|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  | 255|    "               |       Liesborn |"|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  | 256|The Annunciation    |  "             |"|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  | 257|The Purification    |  "             |"|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  | 258|Adoration of Magi   |  "             |"|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  | 259|Christ on the Cross |  "             |"|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  | 260|Three Saints        |  "             |"|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  | 261|    "               |  "             |"|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  | 262|The Crucifixion     |_Sch. of_   "   |"|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  | 263|_Coronation of the  |The younger "   |D|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  |    | Virgin_            |                | |              |    |            |
  | 264|Penitent and Saint  |Flemish _School_|G|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  | 265|Virgin and Child    |  "             |"|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  | 266|The Deposition from |Lambert Lombard |"|P.       "    |  " |    "       |
  |    | the Cross          |                | |              |    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |                                                                             |
  |         _Sir C. L. Eastlake, P.R.A., was appointed Director in 1855._       |
  |                                                                             |
  | 268|Adoration of Magi   |P. Veronese     |G|P. Sig.       |1855|  £1,977    |
  |    |                    |                | |    Toffoli   |    |            |
  | 269|A Knight in Armour  |Giorgione       |"|B. Samuel     |  " |            |
  | 270|"Noli me Tangere"   |Titian          |"|B.    Rogers  |  " |            |
  | 271|"Ecce Homo!"        |Guido Reni      |"|B.     "      |  " |            |
  | 272|An Apostle          |Italian _School_|"|G. Cav.       |  " |            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Vallati   |    |            |
  | 274|Virgin and Child    |A. Mantegna     |"|P. Sig.       |  " | 1,125 12   |
  |    |                    |                | |    Roverselli|    |            |
  | 275|Virgin and Child    |Botticelli      |"|P. G. Bianconi|  " |   159 11  6|
  | 276|Sts. John & Paul    |Spinello Aretino|"|P. Samuel     |1856|    78 15   |
  | 277|The Good Samaritan  |Il Bassano      |"|P.    Rogers  |  " |   241 10   |
  | 278|Triumph of Cæsar    |Rubens          |"|P.     "      |  " | 1,102 10   |
  | 279|Horrors of War      |  "             |"|P.     "      |  " |   210      |
  | 280|Madonna and Child   |Gio. Bellini    |"|P. Baron      |1855|   (5)      |
  |    |                    |                | |     Galvagna |    |            |
  | 281|St. Jerome Reading  |Basaiti         |"|P. M.         |  " |    43 13  1|
  |    |                    |                | |    Marcovich |    |            |
  | 282|Glorification of the|Bertucci        |"|P. Lord Orford|1856|   651      |
  |    |    Virgin          |                | |              |    |            |
  | 283|Virgin and Child    |Benozzo Gozzoli |"|P. Casa       |1855|   137 16  8|
  |    |                    |                | |     Rinuccini|    |            |
  | 284|Madonna and Child   |B. Vivarini     |"|P. Conte degl'|  " |    97      |
  |    |                    |                | |     Algarotti|    |            |
  | 285|    "               |F. Morone       |"|P. Baron      |  " |   (5)      |
  | 286|    "               |Tacconi         |"|P.   Galvagna |  " |    "       |
  | 287|Lodovico Martinengo |Bart. Veneziano |"|P. Conte G.   |  " |    48 10   |
  |    |                    |                | |      Pisani  |    |            |
  | 288|Virgin and Child    |Perugino        |"|P. Duke Melzi |1856| 3,571  8  7|
  | 289|The Night Watch     |Gerrit Lundens  |"|B. Rev. T.    |1857|            |
  |    |                    |                | |      Halford |    |            |
  | 290|A Man's Portrait    |Jan van Eyck    |"|P. H. Carl    |  " |   189 11   |
  |    |                    |                | |        Ross  |    |            |
  | 291|Portrait of a Girl  |Lucas Cranach   |"|P. Lord       |  " |    50  8   |
  |    |                    |                | |    Shrewsbury|    |            |
  | 292|St. Sebastian       |Pollajuolo      |"|P. Marchese   |  " | 3,155  4  6|
  |    |                    |                | |        Pucci |    |            |
  | 293|Virgin and Child    |Filippino Lippi |"|P. Cav. Gius. |  " |   627  8   |
  |    |                    |                | |      Rucellai|    |            |
  | 294|Family of Darius    |P. Veronese     |"|P. Conte V.   |  " |13,650      |
  |    |                    |                | |       Pisani |    |            |
  | 295|Christ and Virgin   |Quentin Metsys  |"|P. King of    |  " |   137 12  9|
  |    |                    |                | |    Holland   |    |            |
  | 296|Virgin Adoring      |Verrocchio      |"|P. Sig.       |  " |   455 16  8|
  |    |                    |                | |      Contugi |    |            |
  | 297|The Nativity        |Il Romanino     |"|P. Conte      |  " |   804      |
  |    |                    |                | |     Avveroldi|    |            |
  | 298|The two S.          |Borgognone      |"|P. Sig. Taddeo|  " |   430      |
  |    |      Catherines    |                | |              |    |            |
  | 299|An Italian Nobleman |Il Moretto      |"|P. Henfry     |1858|   360      |
  | 300|Madonna and Child   |Cima da         |"|P. M. Roussele|  " |   339  6  5|
  |    |                    |    Conegliano  | |              |    |            |
  | 564|Virgin and Child    |Margaritone     |"|P. Lombardi-  |1857|   (6)      |
  | 565|Madonna and Child   |Cimabue         |"|P.  Baldi Gal.|  " |    "       |
  | 566|    "               |Duccio          |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 567|Christ on the Cross |Segna di        |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  |    |                    |   Buonaventura | |              |    |            |
  | 568|Coronation of the   |_Sch. of_ Gaddi |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  |    |   Virgin           |                | |              |    |            |
  | 569|    "               |Orcagna         |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 570|The Trinity         |  "             |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 571|Angels Adoring      |  "             |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 572|    "               |  "             |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 573|The Nativity        |  "             |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 574|Adoration of Magi   |  "             |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 575|The Resurrection    |  "             |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 576|The Three Maries    |  "             |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 577|The Ascension       |  "             |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 578|The Holy Spirit     |  "             |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 579|The  Baptism  of    |Niccolo di      |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  |    |   Christ           |   Pietro Gerini| |     "        |    |            |
  |579A|    "               |G. da Milano    |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 580|Assumption of St.   |Jacopo Landini  |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  |    |    John            |                | |              |    |            |
  |580A|    "               |  "             |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | & B|                    |                | |              |    |            |
  | 581|Saints              |Orcagna         |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  | 582|Adoration of Magi   |Fra Angelico    |G|P. Lombardi-  |1857|   (6)      |
  | 583|Battle of Sant'     |Paolo Uccello   |"|P.  Baldi Gal.|  " |    "       |
  |    |      Egidio        |                | |              |    |            |
  | 584|_Various Saints_     |_Sch. of_ A.   |E|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  |    |                    |   del Castagno | |              |    |            |
  | 585|Portrait of a Lady  |_Sch. of_ Pollaiulo|G|P.   "     |  " |    "       |
  | 586|Madonna and Child   |Macchiavelli    |G|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 587|_Saints_            |_Sch. of_ Lippi |E|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 588|_St. Mark and_      |  "             |D|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  |    |  _St. Augustine_   |                | |              |    |            |
  | 589|Virgin and Child    |Filippo Lippi   |G|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 590|Christ in the Tomb  |Marco Zoppo     |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 591|Rape of Helen      |_Sch. of_ Gozzoli|"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 592|Adoration of Magi   |Botticelli      |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 593|Virgin and Child    |Lorenzo di Credi|"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 594|St. Cosmo and St.   |Emmanuel        |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  |    |   Damian           |                | |              |    |            |
  | 595|Portrait of a Lady |Venetian _School_|"|P. Sig.       |1858|  £214 18   |
  |    |                    |                | |     Menchetti|    |            |
  | 596|The Entombment      |Palmezzano      |"|P. Sig.       |  " |   537  4  7|
  |    |                    |                | |      Gismondi|    |            |
  | 597|St. Vincentius      |F. Cossa        |"|P. Marchese G.|  " |}           |
  |    |                    |      Ferrer    | |    Costabili |    |}  202 16 10|
  | 598|St. Francis         |Filippino Lippi |"|P.    "       | "  |}           |
  | 599|Madonna of Meadow   |Basaiti         |"|P. Sig. A.    |1858|   641  9  4|
  |    |                    |                | |    Farina    |    |            |
  | 600|The Blind Beggar    |Dyckmans        |"|B. Miss Jane  |1859|            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Clarke    |    |            |
  | 602|A Pietà             |Crivelli        |"|P. Cav.       |  " |   303      |
  |    |                    |                | |    Vallati   |    |            |
  | 621|Horse Fair          |Rosa Bonheur    |"|B. Jacob Bell |  " |            |
  | 622|(See note below)[269]|               | |              |    |            |
  | 623|Madonna and Child   |Girolamo da     |"|P. Ld.        |  " |   472 10   |
  |    |                    |   Treviso      | |     Northwick|    |            |
  | 624|Infancy of Jupiter  |Giulio Romano   |"|P.    "       |  " |   920      |
  | 625|An Altar-Piece      |Il Moretto      |"|P.    "       |  " |   577 10   |
  | 626|Portrait of a Man   |Botticelli      |"|P.    "       |  " |   108  3   |
  | 627|Waterfall           |J. Ruysdael     |"|P. Count      |  " | 1,187 15  6|
  | 628|    "               |  "             |"|P.    Stolberg|  " | 1,069 15  3|
  | 629|Madonna and Child   |Lorenzo Costa   |"|P. M. Reiset  |  " |   880      |
  | 630|    "               |G. Schiavone    |"|P. Beaucousin |1860|    (7)     |
  | 631|Portrait of a Lady |_Asc. to_ Bissolo|"|P.   "   Coll.|  " |     "      |
  | 632|A Saint             |Girolamo  da    |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 633|    "               |     Santa Croce|"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 634|Madonna of Goldfinch|Cima da         |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  |    |                    |    Conegliano  | |              |    |            |
  | 635|The "Repose"        |Titian          |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 636|Portrait of a Poet  |Palma Vecchio   |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 637|Daphnis and Chloe   |Paris Bordone   |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 638|Virgin and Child    |Francia         |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 639|"Noli me tangere"   |F. Mantegna     |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 640|Adoration of Magi   |Dosso Dossi     |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 641|The Woman taken     |Mazzolino       |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  |    |      in Adultery   |                | |              |    |            |
  | 642|Christ's Agony      |Garofalo        |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 643|The Capture of      |}_Asc. to_      |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  |    |      Carthagena    |}   Rinaldo     | |              |    |            |
  | 644|The Rape of the     |}     Mantovano |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  |    |      Sabines       |}               | |              |    |            |
  | 645|Virgin and Child    |Albertinelli    |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 646|St. Catherine       |Umbrian _School_|"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 647|St. Ursula          |  "             |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 648|Virgin and Child    |Lorenzo di Credi|"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 649|Portrait of a Boy   |An. Bronzino    |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 650|Portrait of a Lady |Alessandro Allori|"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  | 651|All is Vanity       |An. Bronzino    |"|P.   "        |  " |     "      |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  | 652|Charity             |Salviati        |G|P. Beaucousin |1860|   (7)      |
  | 653|Husband and Wife    |Flemish _School_|"|P.   "  Coll. |  " |    "       |
  | 654|The Magdalen        |_Sch. of_ R.    |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  |    |                    |    Campin      | |              |    |            |
  | 655|    "               |A. Benson       |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 656|A Man's Portrait    |Mabuse          |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 657|Husband and Wife    |J. Cornelissen  |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 658|The Death of the    |_Sch. of_ R.    |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  |    |     Virgin         |    Campin      | |              |    |            |
  | 659|Pan and Syrinx      |Brueghel        |"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 660|A Man's Portrait    |_Asc. to_ Clouet|"|P.   "        |  " |    "       |
  | 661|A Tracing of the    |_After_ Raphael |"|G. Colnaghi   |  " |            |
  |    |    "Madonna di San |                | |       and Co.|    |            |
  |    |          Sisto"    |                | |              |    |            |
  | 663|The Resurrection    |Fra Angelico    |"|P. Sig. G.    |  " |£3,500      |
  |    |                    |                | |    Valentini |    |            |
  | 664|Entombment  of      |D. Bouts        |"|P. Guicciardi |  " |   120 14  6|
  |    |      Christ        |                | |     Family   |    |            |
  | 665|Baptism of Christ   |P. della        |"|P. Sig.       |1861|   241 10   |
  |    |                    |    Francesca   | |     Uzielli  |    |            |
  | 666|The Annunciation    |Filippo Lippi   |"|G. Sir C. L.  |  " |            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Eastlake |    |            |
  | 667|St. John the Baptist|  "             |"|P. A. Barker  |  " |}           |
  |    |     and Saints     |                | |              |    |}           |
  | 668|The Beato Ferretti  |Crivelli        |"|P.   "        |  " |}2,500      |
  | 669|St. Sebastian, St.  |L'Ortolano      |"|P.   "        |  " |}           |
  |    |  Roch, and St. Demetrius|           | |              |    |}           |
  | 670|A Knight            |Bronzino _Sch._ |"|G. G. F.      |  " |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Watts, R.A.|    |            |
  | 671|Madonna and Child   |Garofalo        |"|P. Conte A.   |1860|   763 16   |
  |    |                    |                | |     Mazza    |    |            |
  | 672|His own Portrait    |Rembrandt       |"|P. MM. de     |1861|   800      |
  |    |                    |                | |     Richemont|    |            |
  | 673|"Salvator Mundi"    |A. da Messina   |"|P. Cav. Isola |  " |   160      |
  | 674|Portrait of a Lady  |Paris Bordone   |"|P. Duca di    |  " |   257 13  1|
  |    |                    |                | |     Cardinale|    |            |
  | 679|An Astronomer       |F. Bol          |"|G. Miss E. A. |1862|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Benett   |    |            |
  | 680|The Miraculous      |Van Dyck        |"|P. Cav.       |1861|   220      |
  |    |   Draught of Fishes|                | |      Carelli |    |            |
  | 685|Showery Weather     |Hobbema         |"|P. G. H.      |1862| 1,575      |
  |    |                    |                | |      Phillips|    |            |
  | 686|Madonna and Child   |Memlinc         |"|P. J. P. Weyer|  " |   759      |
  | 687|The Sancta Veronica |Cologne _School_|"|P.   "        |  " |   165      |
  | 690|His own Portrait    |Andrea del      |"|P. Sig. N.    |  " |   270 2    |
  |    |                    |      Sarto     | |       Puccini|    |            |
  | 691|"Ecce Homo!"        |_Asc. to_ Spagna|"|G. Sir W.     |  " |            |
  | 692|St. Hugo of Grenoble|Ludovico da     |"|B.   Moore    |  " |            |
  |    |                    |          Parma | |              |    |            |
  | 693|St. Catherine       |Pinturicchio    |"|B.   "        |  " |            |
  | 694|St. Jerome in Study |Catena          |"|P. Manfrini   |  " |}           |
  | 695|Madonna and Child   |Previtali       |"|P.   Gallery, |  " |}1,047 16  2|
  | 696|Marco Barbarigo     |Petrus Cristus  |"|P.   Venice   |  " |}           |
  | 697|Portrait of a Tailor|Moroni          |"|P. Sig. F.    |1862|   320      |
  |    |                    |                | |     Frizzoni |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |      de Salis|    |            |
  | 698|The Death of Procris|Piero di Cosimo |"|P. Sig. F.    |  " |   171  6  3|
  |    |                    |                | |     Lombardi |    |            |
  | 699|Agostino and Niccolo|Lorenzo Lotto   |"|P. Sig. G.    |  " |   320      |
  |    | Della Torre        |                | |     Morelli  |    |            |
  | 700|The Holy Family     |Lanini          |"|P. G. H.      |1863| 1,200      |
  |    |                    |                | |      Phillips|    |            |
  | 701|Coronation of the   |Justus of Padua |"|G. Queen      |  " |            |
  |    | Virgin             |                | |      Victoria|    |            |
  | 702|Madonna and Child   |Umbrian _School_|"|G.     "      |  " |            |
  | 703|    "               |Pinturicchio    |"|G.     "      |  " |            |
  | 704|Portrait of Cosmo I.|Bronzino _Sch._ |"|G.     "      |  " |            |
  | 705|Three Saints        |_Asc. to_       |"|G.     "      |  " |            |
  |    |                    | Stephan Lochner| |              |    |            |
  | 706|The Presentation    |Master of the   |"|G.     "      |  " |            |
  |    |                    |    Lyversberg  | |              |    |            |
  |    |                    |       Passion  | |              |    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  | 707|St. Peter and St.   |Cologne _School_|G|G. Queen      |1863|            |
  |    |    Dorothy         |                | |     Victoria |    |            |
  | 708|Madonna and Child   |Flemish _School_|"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 709|    "               |Memlinc         |"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 710|A Monk              |Flemish _School_|"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 711|Mater Dolorosa      |R. Weyden       |"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 712|"Ecce Homo!"        |  "             |"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 713|Madonna and Child   |Jan Prevost     |"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 714|Mother and Child    |B. van Orley    |"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 715|The Crucifixion     |Quentin Metsys  |"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 716|St. Christopher     |J. Patinir      |"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 717|St. John in Patmos  |  "             |"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 718|The Crucifixion    |_Asc. to_ H. Bles|"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 719|The Magdalen        |  "             |"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 720|A "Repose"          |Schorel         |"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 721|Portrait of a Lady  |  "             |"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 722|Portrait of a Lady  |German _School_ |"|G.   "        |  " |            |
  | 723|(See note below)[270]|               | |              |    |            |
  | 724|Madonna della       |Crivelli        |"|P. Conte L. de|1862|£2,182 11  5|
  |    |       Rondine      |                | |     Sanctis  |    |            |
  | 726|Christ's Agony      |Gio. Bellini    |"|P. Rev. W.    |1863|   630      |
  | 727|The Trinity         |Pesellino       |"|P.   Davenport|  " | 2,100      |
  | 728|Madonna and Child   |Beltraffio      |"|P.     Bromley|  " |   462      |
  | 729|Adoration of Kings  |Foppa           |"|P.      "     |  " |   127  1   |
  | 732|Canal Scene         |A. van der Neer |"|P. Lord       |1864|   800      |
  |    |                    |                | |   Shaftesbury|    |            |
  | 734|A Milanese Lawyer   |Andrea Solario  |"|P. Sig. G.    |1863|   636  3  9|
  |    |                    |                | |     Baslini  |    |            |
  | 735|St. Roch and the    |Paolo Morando   |"|P. Dr. C.     |1864|}           |
  |    |    Angel           |                | |    Bernasconi|    |}  880      |
  | 736|A Venetian Senator  |Bonsignori      |"|P.    "       |  " |}           |
  | 737|Waterfall           |J. Ruysdael     |"|B. J. M.      |  " |            |
  | 738|_Incident in a_     |C. P. Tschaggeny|O|B.   Oppenheim|  " |            |
  |    |    _Battle_        |                | |              |    |            |
  | 739|The Annunciation    |Crivelli        |G|G. Lord       |  " |            |
  |    |                    |                | |       Taunton|  " |            |
  | 740|Madonna and Child   |Sassoferrato    |"|P. Sig. Jenne,|  " |   380      |
  |    |                    |                | |     Venice   |    |            |
  | 741|A Dead Warrior      |_Asc. to_       |"|P. Pourtalès  |1865| 1,549  4  6|
  |    |                    |    Velazquez   | |      Coll.,  |    |            |
  | 742|Portrait of a Lawyer|Moroni          |"|P.       Paris|  " |   528  8  6|
  | 744|"Garvagh Madonna"   |Raphael         |"|P. Lord       |  " | 9,000      |
  |    |                    |                | |       Garvagh|    |            |
  | 745|Philip IV. of Spain |Velazquez       |"|P. M. Emm.    |  " |}1,200      |
  | 746|Landscape, with Ruin|Ruysdael        |"|P.       Sano |  " |}           |
  | 747|St. John and St.    |_Asc. to_       |"|P.      "     |  " |   480      |
  |    |   Lawrence         |       Memlinc  | |              |    |            |
  | 748|Madonna and Child   |Girolamo dai    |"|P. The Conti  |1864|}           |
  |    |    with St. Anne   |      Libri     | |      Monga,  |    |}1,580      |
  | 749|The Giusti Family   |N. Giolfino     |"|P.      Verona|  " |}           |
  | 750|The  Doge           |L. Bastiani     |"|P. Conte A.   |1865| 3,400      |
  |    |       Gio-Mocenigo |                | |      Mocenigo|    |            |
  | 751|Madonna and Child   |Giovanni Santi  |"|P. Sig. M.    |  " |   120      |
  | 752|    "               |Lippo Dalmasii  |"|P.    Gualandi|  " |   400      |
  | 753|On the Road to      |Altobello       |"|P. Conte C.   |1864|   320      |
  |    |    Emmaus          |    Melone      | |  Castelbarco,|    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Milan    |    |            |
  |                                                                             |
  |       _Sir William (then Mr.) Boxall was appointed Director in 1866._       |
  |                                                                             |
  | 755|Rhetoric            |Melozzo da Forli|G|P. W. Spence  |1866|}  600      |
  | 756|Music               |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |}           |
  | 757|Christ blessing     |_Sch. of_       |"|P. Herr.      |  " | 7,000      |
  |    |   Little Children  |    Rembrandt   | |     Suermondt|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  | 758|Countess Palma of   |Piero della     |G|P. Sig. Egidj |1866|    £160    |
  |    |  Urbino            |  Francesca     | |              |    |            |
  | 766|Head of a Saint     |Dom. Veneziano  |"|P. Lady       |1867|      27 10 |
  |    |                    |                | |      Eastlake|    |            |
  | 767|    "               |  "             |"|P.     "      |  " |      27 10 |
  | 768|St. Peter and St.   |Antonio Vivarini|"|P.     "      |  " |      40    |
  |    |   Jerome           |                | |              |    |            |
  | 769|St. Michael and the |della Francesca |"|P.     "      |  " |      50    |
  |    |   Dragon           |                | |              |    |            |
  | 770|Leonello D'Este     |Giovanni Oriolo |"|P.     "      |  " |      25    |
  | 771|St. Jerome          |Bono            |"|P.     "      |  " |      55    |
  | 772|Madonna and Child   |Cosimo Tura     |"|P.     "      |  " |     160    |
  | 773|St. Jerome          |  "             |"|P.     "      |  " |      75    |
  | 774|Madonna and Child   |D. Bouts        |"|P.     "      |  " |     225    |
  | 775|An Old Woman        |Rembrandt       |"|P.     "      |  " |   1,200    |
  | 776|St. Anthony and St. |Vittore Pisano  |"|G.     "      |  " |            |
  |    |   George           |                | |              |    |            |
  | 777|Madonna and Child   |Paolo Morando   |"|P. Count      |  " |     900    |
  |    |                    |                | |  L. Portalupi|    |            |
  | 778|    "               |Pellegrino da   |"|P. Sig.       |  " |     112    |
  |    |                    |     San Daniele| |     V. Azzola|    |            |
  | 779|Family Portraits    |Borgognone      |"|P. Sig.       |  " |}           |
  |    |                    |                | |       Baslini|    |}    160    |
  | 780|    "               |  "             |"|P.     "      |  " |}           |
  | 781|Raphael and Tobias  |_Asc. to_       |"|P. Count      |  " |}  1,000    |
  |    |                    |       Botticini| |   Galli Tassi|    |            |
  | 782|Madonna and Child  |Botticelli _Sch._|"|P.    "       |  " |}           |
  | 783|Exhumation of St.   |Flemish _School_|"|P. Lady       |1868|   1,500    |
  |    |  Hubert            |                | |      Eastlake|    |            |
  | 788|An Altar-Piece      |Crivelli        |"|P. G. H.      |1868|   3,360    |
  |    |                    |                | |      Phillips|    |            |
  | 790|The Entombment      |Michael Angelo  |"|P. R.         |  " |   2,000    |
  |    |                    |                | |    Macpherson|    |            |
  | 794|Dutch Courtyard     |P. de Hooch     |"|P. M.         |1869|   1,722    |
  |    |                    |                | |     Delessert|    |            |
  | 796|Vase of Flowers     |J. van Huysum   |"|P. C. J.      |  " |     900    |
  |    |                    |                | |   Nieuwenhuys|    |            |
  | 797|A Man's Portrait    |A. Cuyp         |"|P.     "      |  " |     900    |
  | 798|Cardinal Richelieu  |P. de Champaigne|"|G. A.W. Franks|  " |            |
  | 802|Madonna of the      |B. Montagna     |"|P. Sig. G.    |1869|     180 18 |
  |    |     Cherry         |                | |       Baslini|    |            |
  | 803|The Circumcision    |Marco Marziale  |"|P.            |  " |   1,005    |
  | 804|Madonna and Child   |  "             |"|P.            |  " |     502 10 |
  | 805|Peeling Pears       |D. Teniers (jr.)|"|P. G. H.      |1870|     600    |
  |    |                    |                | |      Phillips|    |            |
  | 806|The Procession to   |B. Boccaccino   |"|P. Sig. G.    |  " |     300    |
  |    |  Calvary           |                | |       Baslini|    |            |
  | 807|Madonna and Child   |Crivelli        |"|G. Marchioness|  " |            |
  |    |                    |                | |of Westminster|  " |            |
  | 808|St. Peter Martyr    |Gentile Bellini |"|P. Sig. G.    |  " |     280    |
  |    |                    |                | |       Baslini|    |            |
  | 809|The Holy Family     |Michael Angelo  |"|P. Ld. Taunton|  " |   2,000    |
  | 810|Pardon Day in       |C. Poussin      |"|G. R. E. Lofft|  " |            |
  |    |  Brittany          |                | |              |    |            |
  | 811|Tobias and the      |Salvator Rosa   |"|G. Wynn Ellis |  " |            |
  |    |     Angel          |                | |              |    |            |
  | 812|Death of P. Martyr  |Gio. Bellini    |"|G. Lady       |  " |            |
  |    |                    |                | |      Eastlake|    |            |
  | 814|_A Calm_            |P. J. Clays     |N|B. J. M.      |  " |            |
  |    |                    |                | |       Parsons|    |            |
  | 815|Flushing            |  "             |G|B.      "     |  " |            |
  | 816|The Incredulity of  |Cima da         |"|P. Hospital of|1871|   1,800    |
  |    |  St. Thomas        |      Conegliano| | St. Francesco|    |            |
  | 817|The Château of      |D. Teniers (jr) |"|P. C. J.      |  " |   1,000    |
  |    |    Teniers at Perck|                | |   Nieuwenhuys|    |            |
  | 818|Coast Scene         |Bakhuizen       |"|P. Sir Robert |  " |     (3)    |
  |    |                    |                | |          Peel|    |            |
  | 819|Mouth of the Thames |  "             |"|P.        "   |  " |      "     |
  | 820|Landscape with Ruin |Berchem         |"|P.        "   |  " |      "     |
  | 821|A Family Group      |Gonzales Coques |"|P.        "   |  " |      "     |
  | 822|Evening Landscape   |A. Cuyp         |"|P.        "   |  " |      "     |
  | 823|On the Meuse        |  "             |"|P.        "   |  " |      "     |
  | 824|Ruined Castle       |  "             |"|P.        "   |  " |      "     |
  | 825|Poulterer's Shop    |Gerard Dou      |"|P.        "   |  " |      "     |
  | 826|Landscape, Animals  |K. du Jardin    |"|P.        "   |  " |      "     |
  | 827|The Ford            |  "             |"|P.        "   |  " |      "     |
  | 828|Landscape & Cattle  |  "             |"|P.        "   |  " |      "     |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  | 829|Stag Hunt           |Jan Hackaert    |G|P. Sir Robert |1871|   (8)      |
  |    |                    |                | |    Peel      |    |            |
  | 830|The Avenue          |Hobbema         |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 831|Brederode Castle    |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 832|Water Mills         |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 833|Forest Scene        |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 834|Dutch Interior      |P. de Hooch     |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 835|Court of a House    |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 836|View in Holland     |P. de Koninck   |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 837|Hay Harvest         |J. Lingelbach   |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 838|The Duet            |G. Metsu        |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 839|The Music Lesson    |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 840|Lady feeding Parrot |Frans van Mieris|"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 841|Fish & Poultry Shop |W. van Mieris   |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 842|Garden Scene        |F. Moucheron    |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 843|Blowing Bubbles     |G. Netscher     |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 844|Maternal Instruction|  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 845|Spinning Wheel      |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 846|The Alchymist       |A. van Ostade   |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 847|Village Scene       |I. van Ostade   |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 848|Skating Scene       |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 849|Landscape & Cattle  |Paul Potter     |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 850|Man's Portrait      |Rembrandt       |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 851|Venus Sleeping      |Seb. Ricci      |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 852|Chapeau de Poil     |Rubens          |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 853|Triumph of Silenus  |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 853 A-P.|Studies        |Rubens          |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 854|Forest Scene        |J. Ruysdael     |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 855|Waterfall           |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 856|The Music Master    |Jan Steen       |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 857|The Four Seasons    |D. Teniers (jr.)|"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 858|    "               |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 859|    "               |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 860|    "               |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 861|Country Scene       |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 862|The Surprise        |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 863|Rich Man in Hell    |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 864|The Guitar Lesson   |Terburg         |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 865|Coast Scene         |Van de Cappelle |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 866|Street in Cologne   |Van der Heyden  |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 867|Farm Cottage        |A. van de Velde |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 868|The Ford            |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 869|Frost Scene         |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 870|Shipping in a Calm  |W. van de Velde |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 871|Bathing             |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 872|Shipping off        |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  |    |  the Coast         |                | |              |    |            |
  | 873|    "               |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 874|A Calm at Sea       |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 875|A Light Breeze      |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 876|A Gale              |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 877|His own Portrait    |Van Dyck        |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 877 A, B.|Studies        |  "            |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 878|"Pretty Milkmaid"   |P. Wouwerman    |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 879|Interior of a Stable|  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 880|On the Sea Shore    |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 881|Gathering Faggots   |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 882|Landscape           |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 883|Beggar by Roadside  |Jan Wynants     |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 884|Sand Dunes          |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 895|Francesco Ferruccio |Piero di Cosimo |"|B. Sir A.     |  " |            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Sterling  |    |            |
  | 896|The Peace of Münster|Terburg         |"|G. Sir R.     |  " |            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Wallace   |    |            |
  | 901|_Landscape_         |Jan Looten      |B|B. Mrs. J. H. |1873|            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Jewer     |    |            |
  | 902|Triumph of Scipio   |A. Mantegna     |G|P. Captain    |  " | £1,500     |
  |    |                    |                | |    Vivian    |    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |                                                                             |
  |    _Sir Frederick W. (then Mr.) Burton was appointed Director in 1874._     |
  |                                                                             |
  | 903|Cardinal Fleury     |H. Rigaud       |G|G. Mrs.       |1874|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Charles Fox|    |            |
  | 904|Madonna and Child   |G. Schiavone    |"|P. A. Barker  |  " |    £189    |
  | 905|Madonna in Prayer   |Cosimo Tura     |"|P.    "       |  " |      84 10 |
  | 906|Madonna in Ecstasy  |Crivelli        |"|P.    "       |  " |     577 10 |
  | 907|St. Catherine and   |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |     210    |
  |    |  Mary Magdalene    |                | |              |    |            |
  | 908|The Nativity        |P. della        |"|P.    "       |  " |   2,415    |
  |    |                    |  Francesca     | |              |    |            |
  |[271]909|The Madonna of  |Benvenuto da    |"|P.    "       |  " |     558 12 |
  |    |  the White Rose    |  Siena         | |              |    |            |
  | 910|The Triumph of      |Luca Signorelli |"|P.    "       |  " |     840    |
  |    |  Chastity          |                | |              |    |            |
  | 911|Ulysses and Penelope|Pinturicchio    |"|P.    "       |  " |   2,152 10 |
  | 912|The Story of        |Umbrian _School_|"|P.    "       |  " |     210    |
  |    |  Griselda          |                | |              |    |            |
  | 913|    "               |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |     241    |
  | 914|    "               |  "             |"|P.    "       |  " |     273    |
  | 915|Mars and Venus      |Botticelli      |"|P.    "       |  " |   1,050    |
  | 916|Venus with Cupids   |J. del Sellaio  |"|P.    "       |  " |   1,627 10 |
  | 920|_Orpheus_           |R. Savery       |R|B. S. J.      |  " |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Ainsley    |    |            |
  | 923|A Venetian Senator  |Andrea Solario  |G|P. Sig. G.    |1875|   1,880    |
  |    |                    |                | |   Baslini    |    |            |
  | 924|Gothic Interior     |Pieter Neeffs   |"|G. H. H.      |  " |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Howorth    |    |            |
  | 927|Angel Adoring       |Filippino Lippi |"|B. Wynn Ellis |1876|            |
  | 928|Apollo and Daphne   |_Asc. to_       |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |    |                    |  Pollajuolo    | |              |    |            |
  | 929|"Bridgewater        |After Raphael   |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |    |  Madonna"          |                | |              |    |            |
  | 930|The Garden of Love  |_Sch. of_       |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |    |                    |  Giorgione     | |              |    |            |
  | 931|Magdalen and her    |Italian _School_|"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |    |    Jewels          |                | |              |    |            |
  | 932|A Knight of Malta   |Italian _School_|"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 933|Boy with Dove       |Padovanino      |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 934|Madonna and Child   |Carlo Dolci     |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 935|River Scene         |Salvator Rosa   |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 936|Farnese Theatre,    |Ferd. Bibiena   |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  |    |  Parma             |                | |              |    |            |
  | 937|Scuola di San Rocco |Canaletto       |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 938|Regatta on the Grand|  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  |    |  Canal             |                | |              |    |            |
  | 939|Venice: Piazzetta   |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 940|The Ducal Palace    |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 941|The Grimani Palace  |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 942|Eton College        |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 943|A Portrait          |D. Bouts        |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 944|Two Usurers         |Marinus van     |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  |    |                    |  Romerswael    | |              |    |            |
  | 945|St. Agnes           |J. Patinir      |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 946|A Man's Portrait    |Mabuse          |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 947|    "               |Flemish _School_|"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 948|_Landscape_         |Rubens          |B|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 949|Landscape: Gipsies  |D. Teniers      |G|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  |    |                    |  (sen.)        | |              |    |            |
  | 950|Village Gossips     |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 951|Playing at Bowls    |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 952|A Village Fête      |D. Teniers (jr.)|"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 953|The Toper           |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 954|A Landscape         |Corn.  Huysmans |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 955|Women Bathing       |Poelenburgh     |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  | 956|Italian Landscape   |J. Both         |"|B.    "       |  " |    "       |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  | 957|Goatherds           |J. Both         |G|B. Wynn Ellis |1876|            |
  | 958|Outside Rome        |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 959|_River Scene_       |  "             |R|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 960|Windmills           |A. Cuyp         |N|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 961|The "Large Dort"    |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 962|The "Small Dort"    |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 963|Skating Scene       |I. van Ostade   |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 964|River Scene         |Van de Cappelle |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 965|River Scene, with   |        "       |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |    |  Barge             |                | |              |    |            |
  | 966|Dutch Shipping      |        "       |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 967|River Scene         |        "       |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 968|His Wife's Portrait |Gerard Dou      |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 969|A Frost Scene       |A. van der Neer |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 970|The Drowsy Landlady |G. Metsu        |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 971|Landscape           |Jan Wynants     |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 972|    "               |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 973|Sandbank            |P. Wouwerman    |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 974|Antwerp Cathedral   |P. De Koninck   |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 975|Stag Hunt           |P. Wouwerman    |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 976|Battle Scene        |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 977|Sea Piece           |W. van de Velde |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 978|River Scene         |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 979|A Stiff Breeze      |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 980|Dutch Shipping      |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 981|A Storm at Sea      |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 982|Forest Scene        |A. van de Velde |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 983|Bay Horse           |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 984|Cattle              |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 985|Sheep and Goats     |K. du Jardin    |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 986|Watermills          |J. Ruysdael     |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 987|Rocky Torrent       |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 988|An Old Oak          |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 989|Bleachers           |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 990|Wooded Prospect     |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 991|The Broken Tree     |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 992|Gothic and Classic  |Van der Heyden  |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |    |  Buildings         |                | |              |    |            |
  | 993|Landscape           |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 994|Street in a Town    |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 995|Woody Landscape     |Hobbema         |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 996|_Castle on a Hill_  |  "             |G|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 997|Scouring the Kettle |Schalcken       |N|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 998|The Duet            |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  | 999|Candle Light        |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1000|An Estuary          |Bakhuizen       |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1001|Flower-Piece        |J. Van Huysum   |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1002|    "               |Walscappelle    |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1003|Dead Birds          |Jan Fyt         |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1004|Italian Landscape   |Berchem         |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1005|Ploughing           |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1006|Hurdy-Gurdy         |  "             |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1007|Rocky Landscape     |Jan Wils        |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1008|Stag Hunt           |Pieter Potter   |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1009|An Old Gray Hunter  |Paul Potter     |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1010|Architecture of the |Dirk van Delen  |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |    |  Renaissance       |                | |              |    |            |
  |1011|Portrait of a Lady  |Gonzales Coques |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1012|A Man's Portrait    |Matt. Merian    |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1013|Geese and Ducks     |Hondecoeter     |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1014|St. Lawrence        |A. Elsheimer    |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1015|Fruit and Flowers   |Jan van Os      |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |1016|Portrait of a Girl  |Sir P. Lely     |"|B.    "       |  " |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |1017|A Woody Landscape   |J. Mompers      |G|B. Wynn Ellis |1876|            |
  |1018|Classical Landscape |Claude          |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1019|Head of a Girl      |Greuze          |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1020|Girl with an Apple  |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1021|A Woman's Portrait  |Frans Hals      |"|P. F. A. Keogh| "  |L. _£105_   |
  |1022|An Italian Nobleman |Moroni          |"|P. Sig. G.    | "  | }          |
  |    |                    |                | |  Baslini     |    | }          |
  |1023|An Italian Lady     |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1024|An Italian          |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  | } 5,000    |
  |    |   Ecclesiastic     |                | |              |    | }          |
  |1025|An Italian Nobleman |Il Moretto      |"|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1031|Mary Magdalene      |Savoldo         |"|P.   "        |1877|      350   |
  |1032|Christ's Agony      |Lo Spagna       |"|P. Fuller     |1878|    2,000   |
  |    |                    |                | |   Maitland   |    |            |
  |1033|Adoration of Magi   |Botticelli      |"|P.     "      | "  |      800   |
  |1034|The Nativity        |  "             |"|P.     "      | "  |    1,500   |
  |1035|Portrait of a Man   |Francia Bigio   |"|P.     "      | "  |      500   |
  |1036|A Man's Portrait    |Flemish _School_|"|P.     "      | "  |L. _350_    |
  |1041|St. Helena          |P. Veronese     |"|P. Novar      | "  |    3,465   |
  |    |                    |                | |   Collection |    |            |
  |1042|A Man's Portrait    |C. Van Hemessen |"|P. J. C.      | "  |L. _60_     |
  |    |                    |                | |   Wallace    |    |            |
  |1045|A Canon and his     |Gerard David    |"|B. W. B. White| "  |            |
  |    |   Patron Saints    |                | |              |    |            |
  |1047|A Family Group      |Lorenzo Lotto   |"|B. The Misses |1879|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Solly      |    |            |
  |1048|Portrait of a       |  S. Pulzone    |"|P. W. C.      |1878|   225      |
  |    |  Cardinal          |                | |   Spence     |    |            |
  |1049|The Crucifixion     |Westphalian     |"|G. E.         |1847|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Shipperdson|    |            |
  |1050|_A Sea-piece_       |Bakhuizen       |S|B. The Misses |1879|            |
  |    |                    |                | |     Solly    |    |            |
  |1051|Our Lord, St.       |Bertucci        |G|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |    |  Thomas, and St.   |                | |              |    |            |
  |    |  Anthony           |                | |              |    |            |
  |1052|Portrait of a Young |Lombard _School_|"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |    | Man                |                | |              |    |            |
  |1053|Interior of a Church|De Witte        |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |1054|View in Venice      |Guardi          |"|B. J.         | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Henderson  |    |            |
  |1055|Village Card Party  |Sorgh           |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |1056|"A Kiss in the Cup  |   "  "         |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |1057|_A River Scene_     |C. J. Vernet    |B|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |1058|On the Canal Reggio,|Canaletto       |G|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |    |   Venice           |                | |              |    |            |
  |1059|San Pietro in       |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |    |   Castello, Venice |                | |              |    |            |
  |1060|Two Vedettes        |P. Wouwerman    |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |1061|Explosion at Delft  |Van der Poel    |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |1062|A Battle-Piece      |Ferrarese _Sch._|"|P. W. B. White| "  |     79 16  |
  |1063|A Man's Portrait    |Flemish _School_|"|P. J. H.      | "  |     63     |
  |    |                    |                | |   Anderdon   |    |            |
  |1074|An Oyster Supper    |Dirk Hals       |"|P. E. C. Hill | "  |     80     |
  |1075|The Virgin & Child  |Perugino        |"|P. Baron de la| "  |    3,200   |
  |    |                    |                | |   Penna      |    |            |
  |1077|An Altar-Piece      |Borgognone      |"|P. Sig. G.    | "  |    1,200   |
  |    |                    |                | |   Baslini    |    |            |
  |1078|The Deposition      |_Asc. to_ G.    |"|B. Mrs. J. H. |1880|            |
  |    |                    |  David         | |   Green      |    |            |
  |1079|The Adoration     |_Asc. to_ G. David|"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1080|The Head of St.     |Flemish _School_|"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |    |   John the Baptist |                | |              |    |            |
  |1081|Man Praying         |Early Flemish   |"|B.   "        | "  |    (1)     |
  |1082|The Visit of the    |J. Patinir      |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |    |   Virgin to        |                | |              |    |            |
  |    |   St. Elizabeth    |                | |              |    |            |
  |1083|Christ crowned with |A. Bouts        |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |    |  Thorns            |                | |              |    |            |
  |1084|Flight into Egypt   |J. Patinir      |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1085|Virgin and Child    |Geertgen        |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1086|Christ appearing to |_Sch. of_ R.    |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |    |  the Virgin        |  Campin        | |              |    |            |
  |1087|Mocking of Christ   |German _School_ |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1088|The Crucifixion     |German _School_ |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1089|Virgin and Child    |Early Flemish   |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1090|Pan and Syrinx      |Boucher         |"|G. Mrs. R.    | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Hollond    |    |            |
  |1092|St. Sebastian       |Zaganelli       |"|P. Sig. F.    | "  |      60    |
  |    |                    |                | |   Sacchi     |    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |1093|Vierge aux Rochers  |L. da Vinci     |G|P. Lord       |1880|   £9,000   |
  |    |                    |                | |  Suffolk     |    |            |
  |1094|Portrait of a Man   |_Asc. to_ Sir A.|"|G. British    | "  |            |
  |    |                    |  More          | |  Museum      |    |            |
  |1095|Anna Maria Schurmann|Jan Lievens     |"|G.  "         | "  |            |
  |1096|A Hunting Scene     |J. B. Weenix    |"|G.   "        | "  |            |
  |1098|Virgin and Child    |B. Montagna     |"|P. Sig. G.    |1881|      200   |
  |    |                    |                | |  Baslini     |    |            |
  |1099|Virgin and Child    |A. R. Mengs     |"|B. Miss       | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Kearsley    |    |            |
  |1100|Scene in a Play     |P. Longhi       |"|P. Sig. G.    | "  |       50   |
  |    |                    |                | |  Baslini     |    |            |
  |1101|Menagerie           |  "             |"|    "         | "  |       50   |
  |1102|The Chevalier Andrea|  "             |"|P. Sig. M.    | "  |      300   |
  |    |  Tron              |                | |  Guggenheim  |    |            |
  |1103|Virgin and Child    |F. de Lorenzo   |"|P. Marchese   | "  | }          |
  |    |                    |                | |  Mona'di     |    | }  1,361 11|
  |1104|The Annunciation    |Manni           |"|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1105|The Prothonotary    |Lotto           |"|P. Sig. M.    | "  |      600   |
  |    |  Apostolic, Juliano|                | |  Guggenheim  |    |            |
  |1106|The Resurrection    |F. Mantegna     |"|P. A. W.      | "  |      300   |
  |    |                    |                | |  Thibaudeau  |    |            |
  |1107|The Crucifixion     |Niccolò da      |"|P. Sig. A.    | "  | }          |
  |    |                    |  Foligno       | |  Castellani  |    | }  1,200   |
  |1108|Virgin Enthroned    |Early Sienese   |"|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1109|Marriage of the     |Buonaccorso     |"|P. C. F.      | "  |       80   |
  |    |Virgin              |                | |  Murray      |    |            |
  |1113|A Legendary Subject |P. Lorenzetti   |"|G. C. Fairfax |1882|            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Murray      |    |            |
  |1114|The Five Senses     |Gonzales        |"|P. De Bus di  | "  | }          |
  |    |  (Sight)           |  Coques        | |  Gisignies,  | "  | }          |
  |    |                    |                | |  Brussels    |    | }          |
  |1115|    "  (Hearing)    |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1116|    "  (Feeling)    |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  | } £910 0 8 |
  |1117|    "  (Smell)      |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1118|    "  (Taste)      |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1119|The Virgin & Child  |Ercole di Guilio|"|P. Marchese   | "  |    2,970   |
  |    |  with Saints       |  Grandi        | |  Strozzi     |    |            |
  |1120|St. Jerome in the   |Cima da         |"|P. Duke of    | "  |      493 10|
  |    |  Desert            |  Conegliano    | |  Hamilton    |    |            |
  |1121|Portrait of a Young |Catena          |"|P.   "        | "  |      525   |
  |    |  Man               |                | |              |    |            |
  |1122|St. Jerome          |D. Theotocopuli |"|P.   "        | "  |      336   |
  |1123|Venus and Adonis    |_Sch. of_       |"|P.   "        | "  |    1,417 10|
  |    |                    |  Giorgione     | |              |    |            |
  |1124|Adoration of Magi  |_Sch._ Botticelli|"|P.   "        | "  |    1,627 10|
  |1125|Summer & Autumn     |A. Mantegna     |"|P.   "        | "  |    1,785   |
  |1126|The Assumption      |Botticini       |"|P.   "        | "  |    4,777 10|
  |1127|The Last Supper     |Ercole Grandi   |"|P.   "        | "  |      630   |
  |1128|The Circumcision    |Luca Signorelli |"|P.   "        | "  |    3,150   |
  |1129|Philip IV. of Spain |Velazquez       |"|P.   "        | "  |    6,300   |
  |1130|Christ washing his  |Tintoretto      |"|P.   "        | "  |C. _157 10_ |
  |    |  Disciples' Feet   |                | |              |    |            |
  |1131|Joseph in Egypt     |J. da Pontormo  |"|P.   "        | "  |C. _315_    |
  |1132|A Vestibule         |H. Steenwyck    |"|P.   "        | "  |C. _204 15_ |
  |1133|The Nativity        |Luca Signorelli |"|P. Italy      | "  |L. _1200_   |
  |1134|Madonna and Child   |Liberale        |"|P. Chevalier  | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Fabris      |    |            |
  |1135| }Trajan & the     |Veronese _School_|"|P.    "       | "  |      240   |
  |1136| }Widow             |                | |              |    |            |
  |1137|Portrait of a Boy   |Jacob van Oost  |"|P.    "       | "  |C. _840_    |
  |1138|The Crucifixion     |A. del Castagno |"|P. C. F.      | "  |      137   |
  |    |                    |                | |  Murray      |    |            |
  |1139|The Annunciation    |Duccio          |"|P. Florence   | "  | }          |
  |1140|Christ healing the  |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  | } C. _178_ |
  |    |  Blind             |                | |              |    | }          |
  |1141|His own Portrait    |A. da Messina   |"|P. Genoa      | "  |L. _1040_   |
  |1143|The Procession to   |R. Ghirlandajo  |"|P. Marchese   |1883|    1,200   |
  |    |  Calvary           |                | |  Antinori    |    |            |
  |1144|Madonna and Child   |Il Sodoma       |"|P. C. F.      | "  |      160   |
  |    |                    |                | |  Murray      |    |            |
  |1145|Samson and Delilah  |A. Mantegna     |"|P. D. of      | "  |    2,362 10|
  |    |                    |                | |  Marlborough |    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |1147|Heads of Four Nuns  |A. Lorenzetti.  |G|P. Cav. P.    |1883|L. _£45_    |
  |    |                    |                | |  Lombardi    |    |            |
  |1148|Christ at the Column|Velazquez       |"|G. Sir J.     | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | | Savile Lumley|    |            |
  |1149|Madonna and Child   |Marco d'Oggionno|"|P. Manfrini   | "  |      150   |
  |    |                    |                | |  Gallery,    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Venice      |    |            |
  |1150|Portrait of a Man |_Asc. to_ Pontormo|"|P. C. F.      | "  |       50   |
  |    |                    |                | |  Murray      |    |            |
  |1151|The Entombment      |German          |"|P. Sig. G.    | "  |       80   |
  |    |                    |                | |  Baslini     |    |            |
  |1152|St. John the Baptist|Martino Piazza  |"|P. Sig. P.    | "  |      240   |
  |    |                    |                | |  Vergani     |    |            |
  |1154|Girl with a Lamb    |Greuze          |"|B Mme. Mohl   | "  |            |
  |1155|The Assumption      |M. di Giovanni  |"|P. Sig.       | "  |    2,100   |
  |    |                    |                | |  Griccioli   |    |            |
  |1157|The Nativity        |Cavallino       |"|G. W.         |1884|            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Pilkington  |    |            |
  |1159|Calling of Abraham  |G. Poussin      |"|P. Leigh Court| "  |    1,995   |
  |    |                    |                | |  Coll.       |    |            |
  |1160|Adoration of Magi   |Giorgione       |"|P.  "         | "  |      383 5 |
  |1165|St. Hippolytus & St.|Il Moretto      |"|G. F. T.      | "  |            |
  |    |  Catherine         |                | |  Palgrave    |    |            |
  |1166|The Crucifixion     |A. da Messina   |"|P. London     | "  |C. _350_    |
  |1168|Portrait of a Jesuit|W. van der Vliet|"|P. W. Russell | "  |C. _241 10_ |
  |1169|Mrs. Robert Hollond |Ary Scheffer    |"|B. R. Hollond | "  |            |
  |1170|St. Augustine and   |  "             |"|B. "          | "  |            |
  |    |  St. Monica        |                | |              |    |            |
  |1171|"Ansidei Madonna"   |Raphael         |"|P. D. of      |1885|   70,000   |
  |    |                    |                | |  Marlborough |    |            |
  |1172|Charles the First   |Van Dyck        |"|P. "          | "  |   17,500   |
  |1173|Unknown Subject     |_Sch. of_       |"|P. Bohn       | "  |C. _135_    |
  |    |                    |  Giorgione     | |  Collection  |    |            |
  |1188|The  Betrayal of    |Ugolino da      |"|P. Fuller     | "  | }          |
  |    |  Christ            |  Siena         | | Russell Coll.|    | } C. _26 5_|
  |1189|The Procession to   |  "             |"|P.  "         | "  | }          |
  |    |  Calvary           |                | |              |    |            |
  |1190|Portrait of a Boy   |_Asc. to_ Clouet|"|G. G. F.      | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Watts, R.A. | "  |            |
  |1192|Design for an       |Tiepolo         |"|P. Beckett-   | "  | }L._162 15_|
  |    |  AltarPiece        |                | |  Denison     |    | }          |
  |1193|    "               |  "             |"|P. "          | "  | }          |
  |1194|Christ driving out  |M. Venusti      |"|P. "          | "  |L. _966_    |
  |    |  the Traders       |                | |              |    |            |
  |1195|Birth of Venus      |Rubens          |"|P. "          | "  |C. _672_    |
  |1196|Love and Chastity   |Florentine      |"|P. Genoa      | "  |L. _500_    |
  |1199|Madonna and Child   |Pier Francesco  |"|P. Milan      | "  |W. _170_    |
  |1200|Group of two Saints |Macrino d'Alba  |"|P. "          | "  | } W. _400_ |
  |1201|    "               |  "             |"|P. "          | "  | }          |
  |1202|Madonna and Child   |Bonifazio       |"|P. "          |1886|W. _720_    |
  |1203|    "               |Cariani         |"|P. "          | "  |W. _420_    |
  |1206|Landscape & Figures |Salvator Rosa   |"|B. Mrs. F.    | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Ricketts    |    |            |
  |1211|Marriage Fête at    |Domenico        |"|P. Milan      | "  | }          |
  |    |  Mantua            |  Morone        | |              |    | }          |
  |1212|    "               |  "             |"|P. "          | "  | }          |
  |1213|Portrait of a       |Gentile Bellini |"|P. "          | "  | } W. _1200_|
  |    |  Professor         |                | |              |    | }          |
  |1214|Coriolanus,         |Michele da      |"|P. "          | "  | }          |
  |    |  Volumnia, and     |  Verona        | |              |    | }          |
  |    |  Veturia           |                | |              |    | }          |
  |1215|Madonna and Child   |Dom. Veneziano  |"|G. Earl of    | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Crawford    |    |            |
  |1216| } Fall of the Rebel|Spinello Aretino|"|G. Sir H.     | "  |            |
  | " A| }   Angels         |                | |  Layard      |    |            |
  | " B| }                  |                | |              |    |            |
  |1217|Isarelites gathering|Ercole Roberti  |"|P. Earl of    | "  |C. _650_    |
  |    |  Manna             |                | |  Dudley      |    |            |
  |1218|The History of      |F. Ubertini     |"|P. London     | "  | }          |
  |    |  Joseph            |                | |              |    | }          |
  |1219|      "             |  "             |"|P.  "         | "  | }W. _3,150_|
  |1220|Madonna and Child   |L'Ingegno       |"|P.  "         | "  | }          |
  |1221|"Darby and Joan"    |A. de Pape      |"|P. Blenheim   | "  | } W.  _252_|
  |    |                    |                | |  Coll.       |    |            |
  |1222|Study of Foliage,   |Hondecoeter     |"|G. J.         | "  |            |
  |    |   etc.             |                | |  Whitworth   |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Shaw       |    |            |
  |1227|Virgin and Child    |M. Venusti      |"|P. Messrs.    |1887|L. _452_    |
  |    |                    |                | |  Agnew       |    |            |
  |1229|    "               |Luis de Morales |"|G. Mr. G. F.  | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  de Zoete    |    |            |
  |1230|Portrait of a Girl  |D. Ghirlandajo  |"|P. Whatman    | "  |W. _236 5_  |
  |    |                    |                | |  Coll.       |    |            |
  |1231|Portrait of a       |Sir. A. More    |"|P. "          | "  |W. _257 5_  |
  |    |  Gentleman         |                | |              |    |            |
  |1232|    "               |H. Aldegrever   |"|P. Whatman    | "  |W. _£63 10_ |
  |    |                    |                | |  Coll.       |    |            |
  |1233|The Blood of the    |Gio. Bellini    |"|P. Fairfax    | "  |C. _472 10_ |
  |    |  Redeemer          |                | |  Murray      |    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |1234|A Muse inspiring a  |Dosso Dossi     |G|P. Fairfax    |1887|C. _157 10_ |
  |    |  Court Poet        |                | |  Murray      |    |            |
  |1239|Murder of the       |G. Mocetto      |"|P. Dr. J. P.  |1888| }          |
  |    |  Innocents         |                | |  Richter     |    | }          |
  |1240|    "               |  "             |"|P.    "       | "  | }    600   |
  |1241|Christ in the Temple|P. Campaña      |"|P.    "       | "  | }          |
  |1243|Portrait of a       |Heimbach        |"|P. M. Roberts | "  |       50   |
  |    |  Gentleman         |                | |              |    |            |
  |1247|The Card Players    |Maes            |"|P. Gatton Park| "  |[272]1375 10|
  |    |                    |                | |  Sale        |    |            |
  |1248|Portrait of a Lady  |Van der Helst   |"|P. Col.       | "  |C. _189_    |
  |    |                    |                | |  Everett     |    |            |
  |1251|A Man's Portrait    |Frans Hals      |"|B. Decimus    | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Burton      |    |            |
  |1252|A Fruit-Piece       |Francis Snyders |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |1255|Study of Still Life |Jan van de      |"|G. Sir John   | "  |            |
  |    |                    |  Velde         | |  Saville     |    |            |
  |1256|    "               |Herman Steenwyck|"|G.    "       | "  |            |
  |1257|Birth of the Virgin |Murillo         |"|G.    "       | "  |            |
  |1258|Study of Still Life |J. B. S. Chardin|"|G.    "       | "  |            |
  |1260|Portrait of a Woman |Greek; 2d-3d    |"|G. H. Martyn- | "  |            |
  |    |                    |   cents.       | |  Kennard     |    |            |
  |1261|Portrait of a Man   |  "             |"|G.    "       | "  |            |
  |1262|Portrait of a Woman |  "             |"|G.    "       | "  |            |
  |1263|      "             |  "             |"|G.    "       | "  |            |
  |1264|Portrait of a Man   |  "             |"|G.    "       | "  |            |
  |1265|      "             |  "             |"|G. Jesse      | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Haworth     |    |            |
  |1266|Portrait of a Woman |  "             |"|G.   "        | "  |            |
  |1267|      "             |  "             |"|P. Flinders   | "  | }          |
  |    |                    |                | |   Petrie     |    | }          |
  |1268|Portrait of a Man   |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  | } C. _95_  |
  |1269|Portrait of a Woman |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1270|      "             |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1277|A Man's Portrait    |Maes            |"|G. Sir T.     | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Martin      |    |            |
  |1278|A Convivial Party   |H. G. Pot       |"|P. Messrs Lake|1889|L. _200_    |
  |    |                    |                | |  & Co        |    |            |
  |1280|Christ appearing    |Flemish _School_|"|P. Prof.      | "  |W. _300_    |
  |    |                    |                | |  Attwell     |    |            |
  |1282|San Zenobio         |J. Chimenti     |"|G. G. Salting | "  |            |
  |1284|St. Francis & St.   |Antonio Vivarini|"|P. Dr. J. P.  | "  |C. _200_    |
  |    |  Mark              |                | |  Richter     |    |            |
  |1285|Napoleon I.         |Horace Vernet   |"|G. Duke of    | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Leinster    |    |            |
  |1286|Boy Drinking        |Murillo         |"|B. J. S.      | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Becket      |    |            |
  |1287|An Art Gallery      |Dutch _School_  |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1288|Frost Scene         |A. van der Neer |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1289|Landscape & Cattle  |A. Cuyp         |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1291|Assumption of Virgin|Valdes Leal     |"|P. London     | "  |       400  |
  |1292|_A Family Group_    |Jan van Bylert  |B|P. Deprez &   | "  |C. _50_     |
  |    |                    |                | |  Gutekunst   |    |            |
  |1293|Musical Pastime     |J. M. Molenaer  |G|P. Messrs.    | "  |C. _126_    |
  |    |                    |                | |  Colnaghi    |    |            |
  |1294|Allegorical Subject |W. van de       |"|G. Humphry    | "  |            |
  |    |                    |  Poorter       | |  Ward        |    |            |
  |1295|Virgin and Child    |G. Giovenone    |"|P. Venice     | "  |       320  |
  |1296|Rural Landscape     |G. Zais         |"|P.   "        | "  |       100  |
  |1297|River Scene         |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  |       100  |
  |1298|River Scene         |J. Patinir      |"|P. Florence   | "  | }   2,000  |
  |1299|Portrait of Youth   |D. Ghirlandajo  |"|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1300|Virgin and Child   |Milanese _School_|"|P. Beaucousin |1860|    (7)     |
  |    |                    |                | |  Coll.       |    |            |
  |1301|Savonarola          |Florentine      |"|G. Dr. W.     |1890|            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Radford     |    |            |
  |1302|St. Bartin          |Simon Marmion   |"|P. Beaucousin |1860|    (7)     |
  |    |                    |                | |  Coll.       |    |            |
  |1303|Choir of Angels     |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  |    "       |
  |1304|Marcus Curtius      |Umbrian _School_|"|P.   "        | "  |    "       |
  |1305|_Portraits_         |G. Donck        |R|P. S. Richards|1890|     £166   |
  |1308|Portrait            |Mazo Martinez   |G|G. Crompton   | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Roberts     |    |            |
  |1309|    "               |B. Licinio      |"|P. Perkins    | "  |      288 15|
  |    |                    |                | |  Sale        |    |            |
  |1310|"Ecce Homo!"        |Cima da         |"|P.   "        | "  |      535 10|
  |    |                    |    Conegliano  | |              |    |            |
  |1311|Winter Scene        |Beerstraaten    |"|P. Colnaghi   | "  |       75   |
  |1312|Village Cobbler     |Jan Victors     |"|P.   "        | "  |       73   |
  |1313|The Milky Way       |Tintoretto      |"|P. Lord       | "  |  2,500[273]|
  |    |                    |                | |  Darnley     |    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |1314|The Ambassadors     |Holbein         |G|P. & G.       |1890| }          |
  |    |                    |                | |      Longford|    | }          |
  |    |                    |                | |        Castle|   |}£55,000[274]|
  |1315|Ad. Pulido-Pareja   |Velazquez       |"|   "     "    | "  | }          |
  |1316|Italian Nobleman    |Moroni          |"|   "     "    | "  | }          |
  |1317|Marriage of Virgin  |Sienese _School_|"|P. Mr. A.     | "  |C. _70_     |
  |    |                    |                | |  Borgen      |    |            |
  |1318|Unfaithfulness      |P. Veronese     |"|P. Lord       | "  |   [275]    |
  |    |                    |                | |  Darnley     |    |            |
  |1319|View in Rome        |Claude          |"|P. Count      | "  |       175  |
  |    |                    |                | |  d'Aglié     |    |            |
  |1320|Aglonius Voon       |C. Janssens     |"|G. Mrs. Z.    |1891|            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Troughton   |    |            |
  |1321|Cornelia Remoens    |  "             |"|G.   "        | "  |            |
  |1323|Piero de' Medici    |An. Bronzino    |"|B. Sir W.     | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Drake       |    |            |
  |1324|Scorn               |P. Veronese     |"|P. Lord       | "  |    2500[3] |
  |    |                    |                | |  Darnley     |    |            |
  |1325|Respect             |  "             |"|G.   "        | "  |            |
  |1326|Happy Union         |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  |   [276]    |
  |1327|Winter Scene        |Jan van Goyen   |"|P. Colnaghi   | "  |L. _335_    |
  |1329|Interior            |Brekelenkam     |"|P. Buttery    | "  |W. _90_     |
  |1330|Transfiguration     |Duccio          |"|G. R. H.      | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Wilson      |    |            |
  |1331|Virgin and Child    |B. Fungai       |"|G. W. Connal, | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  junior      |    |            |
  |1332|First Earl of       |G. Netscher     |"|G. Lord Savile| "  |            |
  |    |  Berkeley          |                | |              |    |            |
  |1333|Deposition          |Tiepolo         |"|P. C. Bentinck| "  |C. _157 10_ |
  |1334|Fortune-teller      |P. Longhi       |"|P.  "         | "  |C. _105_    |
  |1335|Madonna             |French _School_ |"|P. Miss Sorel | "  |C. _50_     |
  |1336|Death of Dido       |Liberale        |"|P. Habich,    | "  | }          |
  |    |                    |                | |  Cassel      |    | }          |
  |1337|"Ecce Homo!"        |Sodoma          |"|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1338|Adoration of        |B. Fabritius    |"|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |    |  Shepherds         |                | |              |    | }          |
  |1339|Birth of St. John   |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1340|_Landscape_         |R. Roghman      |R|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1341|    "               |C. Decker       |G|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1342|    "               |J. de Wet       |"|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1343|_Amsterdam_         |Dutch _School_  |C|P.   "        | "  | }   2,807  |
  |    |    _Musketeers_    |                | |              |    | }          |
  |1344|Landscape           |S. Ruysdael     |G|P.   "        | "  | }          |
  |1345|    "               |J. Wouwerman    |"|P.    "       | "  | }          |
  |1346|Winter Scene        |H. Avercamp     |"|P.    "       | "  | }          |
  |1347|Farmyard            |I. van Ostade   |"|P.    "       | "  | }          |
  |1348|Landscape           |A. van de Velde |"|P.    "       | "  | }          |
  |1352|    "               |F. Moucheron    |"|B. R. W.      |1892|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Cooper     |    |            |
  |1353|    "               |Ryckaert        |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |1375|House of Martha     |Velazquez       |"|B. Sir W.     | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Gregory     |    |            |
  |1376|Sketch of a Duel    |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1377|Adoration of       |Venetian _School_|"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |    |  Shepherds         |                | |              |    |            |
  |1378|Interior            |Jan Steen       |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1380|Fruit and Flowers   |Jan van Os      |"|G. G. Holt    | "  |            |
  |1381|The Holy Women      |F. Mantegna     |"|B. Lady       | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Taunton    |    |            |
  |1383|Spinet              |Jan Vermeer     |"|P. Lawrie     | "  |    £2400   |
  |1386|Soldiers Quarrelling|W. C. Duyster   |"|P. Romer      |1893| }          |
  |    |                    |                | |   Williams   |    | }  £1250   |
  |1387|Players at Tric-Trac|  "             |"|P.    "       | "  | }          |
  |1390|Sea-Piece           |J. Ruysdael     |"|P. Mildmay    | "  |     3045   |
  |    |                    |                | |   Sale       |    |            |
  |1393|A Seaport           |C. J. Vernet    |"|G. Mrs.       | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Tarratt    |    |            |
  |1397|Old Woman Sewing    |Dutch _School_  |"|G. Mr. H. J.  |1894|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Pfungst    |    |            |
  |1399|Man's Portrait      |Terburg         |"|P. Eastlake   | "  |    75[4]   |
  |    |                    |                | |   Sale       |    |            |
  |1400|Christ before Pilate|Rembrandt       |"|P.   "        | "  |    25[277] |
  |1401|Still Life          |P. Snyers       |"|P. S. Richards| "  |      175   |
  |1406|The Annunciation  |_Sch. of_ Angelico|"|P. Lawrie     | "  |     1500   |
  |    |                    |                | |              |    |            |
  |_Mr. (now Sir) E. J. Poynter, P.R.A., was appointed Director May 8, 1894._   |
  |    |                    |                | |              |    |            |
  |1409|Marriage of St.     |A. C. Agii      |G|P. Eastlake   |1894|C. _252_    |
  |    |  Catherine         |                | |  Sale        |    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |1410|Virgin and Child    |Borgognone      |G|P. Eastlake   |1894|    £441    |
  |    |                    |                | |   Sale       |    |            |
  |1411|Adoration of the    |Ercole Roberti  |"|P.  "         | "  |     493 10 |
  |    |  Shepherds, etc.   |                | |              |    |            |
  |1412|Virgin and Child   |_Sch._ Botticelli|"|P.     "      | "  |     756    |
  |1415|Anna Maria van      |Gerard Dou      |"|P. Mr. H.     | "  |     120    |
  |    |  Schurman          |                | |  Buttery     |    |            |
  |1416|Virgin and Child    |F. Mazzola      |"|P. Fairfax    | "  |L. _120_    |
  |    |                    |                | |   Murray     |    |            |
  |1417|Agony in the Garden |A. Mantegna     |"|P. Earl of    | "  |     1500   |
  |    |                    |                | |   Northbrook |    |            |
  |" A |Illuminated Initial |  "             |"|G.     "      | "  |            |
  |    |  Letter            |                | |              |    |            |
  |1418|St. Jerome          |A. da Messina   |"|P.     "      | "  |     2500   |
  |1419|Legend of St. Giles |French _School_ |"|P.     "      | "  |     2000   |
  |1420|View in Haarlem     |G. A.           |"|P. Mr. Adrian | "  |      472 10|
  |    |                    |  Berck-Heyde   | |   Hope       |    |            |
  |1421|A Terrace Scene     |Jan Steen       |"|P.    "       | "  |      819   |
  |1422|The Holy Family     |E. Le Sueur     |"|G. Mr. F. T.  | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Palgrave   |    |            |
  |1423|Lady's Portrait     |A. van          |"|G. Mr. A.     | "  |            |
  |    |                    |   Ravesteijn   | | Fowell Buxton|    |            |
  |1424|Tobias and the Angel|A. Elsheimer    |"|B. Mr. S.     | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Sanders    |    |            |
  |1425|Tasting             |Le Nain         |"|G. Mr. Lesser | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Lesser     |    |            |
  |1427|A Pietà             |Hans Baldung    |"|P. George     | "  |L. _600_    |
  |    |                    |                | |   Donaldson  |    |            |
  |1429|The Rotunda,        |Canaletto       |"|P. Mr. H.     | "  |     120    |
  |    |  Ranelagh          |                | |   Buttery    |    |            |
  |1430|Architectural       |Beccafumi       |"|G. Mr. George | "  |            |
  |    |  Subject           |                | |   Salting    |    |            |
  |1431|Baptism of Christ   |Perugino        |"|P. Rome       | "  |     400    |
  |1432|Marriage of         |Gerard David    |"|B. Mrs. Lyne  |1895|            |
  |    |  St. Catherine     |                | |   Stephens   |    |            |
  |1433|Lady's Portrait     |R. Weyden       |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |1434|A Betrothal         |Velazquez       |"|G. Lord Savile| "  |            |
  |1436|The Vision of       |Vittore Pisano  |"|P. Earl of    | "  |    3000    |
  |    |  St. Eustace       |                | |  Ashburnham  |    |            |
  |1437|Descent of the Holy |Barnaba         |"|P. Mr. C.     | "  |      60    |
  |    |  Ghost             |  da Modena     | |    Simpson   |    |            |
  |1438|Head of John the   |Milanese _School_|"|P. Mr. J. C.  | "  |W. _140 7 6_|
  |    |  Baptist           |                | |   Watt       |    |            |
  |1439|Fishing in the River|S. Ruysdael     |"|From South    | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Kensington  |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Museum      |    |            |
  |1440|St. Dominic         |Gentile  Bellini|"|    "         | "  |            |
  |1441|A Fresco            |Perugino        |"|    "         | "  |            |
  |1442|Ships in a Gale     |Bakhuizen       |"|    "         | "  |            |
  |1443|Interior of a Church|H. Steenwyck    |"|    "         | "  |            |
  |1444|Peasants Warming    |G. van Honthorst|"|    "         | "  |            |
  |    |  Themselves        |                | |              |    |            |
  |1445|Flower-Piece        |Rachel Ruysch   |"|    "         | "  |            |
  |1446|    "               |  "             |"|    "         | "  |            |
  |1447|A Hunting Party     |A. F. van der   |"|P. Lyne       | "  |      147   |
  |    |                    |  Meulen        | |Stephens' Sale|    |            |
  |1448|Village Green in    |F. S. Bonvin    |"|G. Mrs. E.    | "  |            |
  |    |  France            |                | |   Edwards    |    |            |
  |1449|Cardinal Richelieu  |P. de Champaigne|"|G. Mr. Charles| "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Butler     |    |            |
  |1450|The Holy Family     |Seb. del Piombo |"|P. Earl of    | "  |     2000   |
  |    |                    |                | |   Northbrook |    |            |
  |1451|Interior of a Church|G. A.           |"|P. Lord       | "  |      525   |
  |    |                    |  Berck-Heyde   | |Clifden's Sale|    |            |
  |1454|A Gondola           |Guardi          |"|P.    "       | "  |       69 6 |
  |1455|The Circumcision    |Gio. Bellini    |"|G. Earl of    | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Carlisle   |    |            |
  |1456|Virgin and Child    |Italian _School_|"|G. Mr. John   | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  P. Heseltine|    |            |
  |1457|Christ in the Temple|D. Theotocopuli |"|G. Sir J. C.  | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Robinson   |    |            |
  |1459|The Wine Contract   |G. van den      |"|P. Colnaghi   | "  |      506 2 |
  |    |                    |  Eeckhout      | |              |    |            |
  |1461|St. Sebastian       |M. di Giovanni  |"|P. Florence   | "  |      571   |
  |    |                    |                | |   (Bardini)  |    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |1462|A Sea Piece         |H. Dubbels      |G|G. Mr. Arthur |1895|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Kay        |    |            |
  |1465|Christ rising from  |Gaudenzio       |"|P. Milan      | "  |     £215   |
  |    |  the Tomb          |  Ferrari       | | (Scarpa Sale)|    |            |
  |1466|The Walk to Emmaus  |Lelio Orsi      |"|P.    "       | "  |       25   |
  |1468|The Crucifixion     |J. di Cione     |"|B. Rev. J. H. |1896|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Ash        |    |            |
  |1469|Still Life          |W. K. Heda      |"|G. Mr. H. J.  | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Pfungst    |    |            |
  |1470|Battle Scene        |J. Weier        |"|G. Sir A. W.  | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Franks     |    |            |
  |1471|The Picnic          |F. Goya         |"|P. Duke de    | "  | }    265   |
  |    |                    |                | |   Osuna      |    | }          |
  |1472|The Bewitched       |  "             |"|P.     "      | "  | }          |
  |1473|Lady's Portrait     |  "             |"|P. Don A. de  | "  |      405   |
  |    |                    |                | |   Urzaiz     |    |            |
  |1476|Jupiter and Semele  |A. Schiavone    |"|P. Lord       | "  |       42   |
  |    |                    |                | |   Leighton's |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Sale       |    |            |
  |1478|The Crucifixion     |G. Mansueti     |"|P. London     | "  |      436   |
  |1479|A Winter Scene      |H. Avercamp     |"|P. Mr. J. St. | "  |L. _89_     |
  |    |                    |                | |   Hensè      |    |            |
  |1481|A Philosopher       |C. P. Bega      |"|G. Martin     | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Colnaghi   |    |            |
  |1489|Venetian Senator   |Venetian _School_|"|From South    | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |  Kensington  |    |            |
  |1490|    "        "      |   "      "     |"|  "   "   "   | "  |            |
  |1493|Landscape, Carrara  |G. Costa        |"|G. Body of    |1897|            |
  |    |  Mountains         |                | |  Subscribers |    |            |
  |1495|Christ Disputing    |Mazzolino       |"|P. Messrs.    | "  |     350    |
  |    |                    |                | |   Agnew      |    |            |
  |1652|Mad. van der Goes   |Dutch _School_  |"|B. Miss Brown | "  |            |
  |1653|Portrait of the     |Mme. Vigée Le   |"|P. Mr. S. T.  | "  |     600    |
  |    |  Artist            |   Brun         | |   Smith      |    |            |
  |1660|    "               |Adrian van der  |"|G. Sir E.     |1898|            |
  |    |                    |  Werff         | | Malet, G.C.B.|    |            |
  |1661| } Wings of No. 1093|Ambrogio de     |"|P. Duke Melzi,| "  |     2160   |
  |1662| }                  |  Predis        | |   Milan      |    |            |
  |1664|La Fontaine         |J. B. S. Chardin|"|P. Mons.      |    |     721    |
  |    |                    |                | |   Sortais,   |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Paris      |    |            |
  |1665|Portrait of a Young |Amb. de Predis  |"|P. Mr. Fuller | "  |     1500   |
  |    |  Man               |                | |   Maitland   |    |            |
  |1674|Portrait of a       |Rembrandt       |"|P. Lord       |1899| }          |
  |    |  Burgomaster       |                | |   de Saumarez|    | }          |
  |1675|Portrait of an Old  |  "             |"|P.   "        | "  |}15,050[278]|
  |    |   Lady             |                | |              |    | }          |
  |1676|Christ  disputing   |Francesco de    |"|B. Mrs.       | "  |            |
  |    |  with the Doctors  |   Herrera      | |   Alexander  |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Lang Elder |    |            |
  |1680|Portrait of a Young |Dutch _School_  |"|P. Mr. Horace | "  |     280    |
  |    |   Man              |                | |    Buttery   |    |            |
  |1682|Virgin and Child    |Francesco di    |"|P. Messrs.    | "  |     140    |
  |    |                    |   Giorgio      | |    Agnew     |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   (Bardini   |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Coll.)    |    |            |
  |1683|Study of a Horse    |A. Cuyp         |"|From South    | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | | Kensington   |    |            |
  |1686|Study of Flowers    |Fantin-Latour   |"|G. Mrs. E.    | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Edwards    |    |            |
  |1689|A Man and Wife      |Mabuse          |"|P. Mr. A. H.  |1900|    4000    |
  |    |                    |                | |   Buttery    |    |            |
  |1694|Virgin and Child    |Fra Bartolommeo |"|P. Cav.       | "  |L. _810_    |
  |    |                    |                | |   Landolfi   |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   (Rome)     |    |            |
  |1695|Landscape with     |Venetian _School_|"|From South    | "  |            |
  |    |  Nymphs            |                | |  Kensington  |    |            |
  |1696|Virgin and Child    |Gio. Bellini    |"|G. Lady Layard| "  |            |
  |1699|The Lesson         |_Asc. to_ Vermeer|"|G. Mr. Fairfax| "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Murray     |    |            |
  |1700|Portrait of a       |Dutch _School_  |"|B. Miss       | "  |            |
  |    |  Gentleman         |                | |   Pilbrow    |    |            |
  |1701|Landscape           |Allart van      |"|G. Mr. G. H.  | "  |            |
  |    |                    |   Everdingen   | |Boughton, R.A.|    |            |
  |1776|The Adoration of the|Luca Signorelli |"|P. Colnaghi   | "  |     450    |
  |    |  Shepherds         |                | |              |    |            |
  |1786|Lake of Thun        |A. Calame       |"|B. H. Vaughan | "  |            |
  |1810|Portrait of a Boy   |F. Duchatel     |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1812|Agony in the Garden |_Asc. to_ Spagna|"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |1842|Heads of Angels     |Sassetta        |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |1843|Adoration of the    |B. Bonfigli     |G|P. Prof.      |1901|    £382 10 |
  |    |  Magi              |                | |   Volpi,     |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Florence   |    |            |
  |1845|The Light of the    |Paris Bordone   |"|G. Mrs. Wood  | "  |            |
  |    |  World             |                | |              |    |            |
  |1847|Virgin crowned by   |Luca Signorelli |"|P. Prof.      | "  |    2667 10 |
  |    |  Angels            |                | |   Volpi,     |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Florence   |    |            |
  |1848|Portrait of a Youth |A. Raguineau    |"|P. Noseda,    | "  |     350    |
  |    |                    |                | |   Milan      |    |            |
  |1849|The Nativity        |J. Pacchiarotto |"|P. Agnew      | "  |     500    |
  |1850|Scene on the Ice    |Vermeulen       |"|B. Miss S.    | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Gaught     |    |            |
  |1851|Inside of a Stable  |Dutch _School_  |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |1860|Portrait of a Lady|_Asc._ Sir A. More|"|B. Miss Julia |1896|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Gordon     |    |            |
  |1870|Angel with Keys     |Conca           |"|Lent by S. K. |1897|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Mus.       |    |            |
  |1872|Virgin and Child    |Alv. Vivarini   |"|G. C. Loeser  |1898|            |
  |1895|Baron de Linter of  |Jacob Jordaens  |"|P. T. H. Ward.|1902|C. _1200_   |
  |    |  Namur             |                | |              |    |            |
  |1896|Interior of a Church|P. Saenredam    |"|G. Mr. Arthur | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Kay        |    |            |
  |1897|Coronation of the   |Lorenzo         |"|P. Galli-Dunn,| " |C._2739 13 8_|
  |    |   Virgin           |  Monaco        | |   Florence   |    |            |
  |1903|Landscape and       |Pieter Boel     |"|G. Sir E.     | "  |            |
  |    |  Game              |                | |   Durning-   |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Lawrence   |    |            |
  |1909|Execution of Lady   |P. Delaroche    |"|B. Lord       | "  |            |
  |    |  Jane Grey         |                | |   Cheylesmore|    |            |
  |1914|Château in Holland  |Van der Heyden  |"|B. Sir J.     | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Carmichael |    |            |
  |1915|Church and          |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |    |  Marketplace       |                | |              |    |            |
  |1917|Italian Landscape   |Jan Both        |"|B. Lord       | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Cheylesmore|    |            |
  |1918|Market-place, the   |La Fargue       |"|P. Hon. C.    |1903|L. _300_    |
  |    |  Hague             |                | | Sclater-Booth|    |            |
  |1925|Portrait of a Man   |Lucas Cranach   |"|G. J. P.      | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Heseltine  |    |            |
  |1930|St. Margaret        |Zurbaran        |"|P. Lord       | "  |C. _1000_   |
  |    |                    |                | |   Northampton|    |            |
  |1937|Portrait of a Lady  |B. van der      |"|P.     "      |1904| }          |
  |    |                    |  Helst         | |              |    | }          |
  |1938|Portrait of his     |A. Dürer        |"|P.      "     | "  | } 10,000   |
  |    |  Father            |                | |              |    | }          |
  |1939|Virgin and Child    |French _School_ |"|P. Agnew      | "  |L. _94 14_  |
  |1944|"Portrait of        |Titian          |"|P. Sir G.     | "  | 30,000[279]|
  |    |   Ariosto"         |                | |   Donaldson  |    |            |
  |1951|Dr. Peral           |Goya            |"|G.    "       | "  |            |
  |1952|Mr. and Mrs. E.     |Fantin-Latour   |"|G. Mrs. E.    | "  |            |
  |    |  Edwards           |                | |   Edwards    |    |            |
  |                                                                             |
  |_Sir Edward Poynter, P.R.A., retired on December 31, 1904; and the post of_  |
  |_Director was left vacant for eighteen months. Sir Charles Holroyd_          |
  |_was appointed to it on June 11, 1906._                                      |
  |                                                                             |
  |1953|Virgin and Child    |L. Bastiani     |G|G. Art        |1905|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Collection |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Fund       |    |            |
  |1969|Greek Captive       |H. Browne       |"|B. C. Fraser  | "  |            |
  |2057|Venus and Cupid     |Velazquez       |"|G. Art        |1906|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Collection |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Fund       |    |            |
  |2058|Sunny Days in the   |Diaz            |"|G. Exors.     | "  |            |
  |    |  Forest            |                | |    Charles   |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |    Hastie    |    |            |
  |2062|Christ in Peter's   |Saftleven       |"|G. C. L.      | "  |            |
  |    |  Ship              |                | |   Eastlake   |    |            |
  |2069|Madonna of the      |Raphael         |"|G. Miss Eva   | "  |            |
  |    |  Tower             |                | |   Mackintosh |    |            |
  |2078|Trouville           |Boudin          |"|G. Art        | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Collection |    |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Fund       |    |            |
  |2081|Lulli and Musicians |H. Rigaud       |"|P. Coulanges  | "  |    £2,000  |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |2082|Florentine Lady    |_Sch._ Botticelli|G|}             |    |            |
  |2083|Dr. Fiera           |Lorenzo Costa   |"|}             |    |            |
  |2084|Young Man in Black  |Florentine      |"|}             |    |            |
  |2085|Bianca Capello      |Bronzino _Sch._ |"|}             |    |            |
  |2086|Gate and Tower      |Zuccarelli      |"|}             |    |            |
  |2087|Pastoral Landscape  |  "             |"|}             |    |            |
  |2088|Christ Teaching     |B. Luini        |"|}             |    |            |
  |2089|Madonna and Child  |Beltraffio _Sch._|"|}             |    |            |
  |2090|An Angel            |Il Moretto      |"|}             |    |            |
  |2091|      "             |  "             |"|}             |    |            |
  |2092|St. Joseph          |  "             |"|}             |    |            |
  |2093|St. Jerome          |  "             |"|}             |    |            |
  |2094|Il Cavaliere        |Moroni          |"|}B. Nos. 2082-|}   |            |
  |2095|Man in Black        |Alv. Vivarini   |"|}2107, being  |}   |            |
  |2096|Man with a Beard    |Il Romanino     |"|}the John     |}   |            |
  |2097|Lady with Carnations|Paris Bordone   |"|}Samuel       |}   |            |
  |    |                    |                | |}Collection,  |}   |            |
  |    |                    |                | |}were         |}   |            |
  |    |                    |                | |}bequeathed by|}1906|           |
  |2098|Salute, Venice      |Guardi          |"|}Miss Louisa  |}   |            |
  |2099|Ducal  Palace,      |  "             |"|}and Miss     |}   |            |
  |    |  Venice            |                | |}Lucy Cohen   |}   |            |
  |2100|Marriage of         |Tiepolo         |"|}             |    |            |
  |    |  Barbarossa        |                | |}             |    |            |
  |2101|Esther and Ahasuerus|Seb. Ricci      |"|}             |    |            |
  |2102|Town and River      |Marieschi       |"|}             |    |            |
  |2103|    "               |  "             |"|}             |    |            |
  |2104|Man with Collar     |Enrico Fiammingo|"|}             |    |            |
  |2105|Man with a Beard    |An. Carracci    |"|}             |    |            |
  |2106|Portrait of the     |B. Gennari      |"|}             |    |            |
  |    |  Artist            |                | |}             |    |            |
  |2107|Hagar               |Salvator Rosa   |"|}             |    |            |
  |2118|Madonna and Child   |G. F. da Rimini |"|G. George     |1907|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Salting    |    |            |
  |2127|The Marchesa        |Van Dyck        |"|P. Colnaghi   | "  |  £13,500[1]|
  |    |   Cattaneo         |                | |              |    |            |
  |2129|The Parade          |G. de St. Aubin |"|P. Agnew      | "  |L. _99 15 0_|
  |2130|The Water Lane      |Jan Siberechts  |"|G. J. P.      | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Heseltine  |    |            |
  |2133|Roses               |Fantin-Latour   |"|B. Mrs. Edwin | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Edwards    |    |            |
  |2134|Apples              |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2135|The Marsh of Arleux |Corot           |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2136|Lulli the Musician  |A. de St. Aubin |"|G. Comtesse de| "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Coullanges |    |            |
  |2143|Lady at a Spinet    |J. Ochtervelt   |"|G. Henry      | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Pfungst    |    |            |
  |2144|The Marchesa        |Van Dyck        |"|P. Colnaghi   | "  |£13,500[280]|
  |    |  Cattaneo          |                | |              |    |            |
  |2162|His own Portrait    |Joseph Ducreux  |"|P. Shepherd   | "  |L. _50_     |
  |2163|The Magdalen        |Mabuse          |"|P. T. H. Mack | "  |L. _30_     |
  |2204|Church Interior     |Hendr. Steenwyck|"|B. H. C.      | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Bunning    |    |            |
  |2205|Church Interior     |Pieter Neeffs   |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2206|Vespers             |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2207|After Vespers       |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2209|Duke Ulricus        |J. Cornelissen  |"|G. Mrs.       | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Eastlake   |    |            |
  |2211|Jacqueline          |Mabuse          |"|P. Lewis Fund |1908|            |
  |2216|La Main Chaude      |Troy            |"|G. Col. Lyons | "  |            |
  |2217|Elisa Bonaparte     |J. L. David     |"|P. Lewis Fund | "  |            |
  |2218|Mme. Malibran       |Ingres          |"|P.    "       | "  |            |
  |2251|Bona of Savoy       |Amb. de Predis  |"|G. Sir G.     | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Donaldson  |    |            |
  |2256|River Scene         |Harpignies      |"|G. Miss M'Ghee| "  |            |
  |2257|Ilex Trees          |  "             |"|G.   "        | "  |            |
  |2258|Woodland Scene      |G. Michel       |"|P. Lewis Fund | "  |            |
  |2281|Madonna             |Lotto           |"|B. Colnaghi   | "  |            |
  |2282|Bohemians           |P. Wouwerman    |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2283|Dawn                |A. van der Neer |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2285|Family Group        |Frans Hals      |"|P. Lord Talbot| "  |  £25,000   |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |2288|Dr. Forlenze        |J. A. Vallin    |G|G. F. Mélé    |1908|            |
  |2289|Attila              |Delacroix       |"|G.    "       | "  |            |
  |2290|Parc de Sansac      |A. Charnay      |"|G. The Artist | "  |            |
  |2291|Cardinal de Retz    |P. de Champaigne|"|B. G. Fielder | "  |            |
  |2292|A Lady              |Mirevelt        |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2293|Holy Family         |_Asc. to_ Penni |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2294|Galileo             |Passignano      |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2295|A Commander         |Pourbus, _Jun._ |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2423|Horses (lithographs)|Géricault       |"|G. E. Houghton|1898|            |
  |2439|River Scene         |T. Rousseau     |"|G. H. Velten  |1909|            |
  |2475|Duchess of Milan    |Holbein         |"|[281]Duke of  | "  |   £72,000  |
  |    |                    |                | |   Norfolk    |    |            |
  |2480|Fish Market         |P. Rousseau     |"|G. H. L.      | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Florence   |    |            |
  |2482|Virgin and Child    |Benvenuto       |"|B. George     |1910|            |
  |    |                    |  da Siena      | |   Salting    |    |            |
  |2483|      "             |F. de Lorenzo   |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2484|      "             |L'Ingegno       |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2485|Salome              |Cesare da Sesto |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2486|A Concert           |Ercole Roberti  |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2487|B. Bianchini        |Francia         |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2488|Holy Family         |Luca Signorelli |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2489|Young Florentine    |D. Ghirlandajo  |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2490|Costanza de' Medici |Lorenzo di Credi|"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2491|Girolamo Benevieni  |R. Ghirlandajo  |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2492|Virgin and Child    |J. del Sellaio  |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2493|Salome              |S. del Piombo   |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2494|Italian Gentleman   |Cariani         |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2495|Virgin and Child    |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2496|    "               |Beltraffio      |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2497|    "              |Botticelli _Sch._|"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2498|Young Venetian      |Basaiti         |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2499|Virgin and Child    |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2500|      "             |Previtali       |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2501|Salvator Mundi      |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2502|Virgin and Child    |B. Mainardi     |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2503|Holy Family         |A. da Solario   |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2504|Virgin and Child    |Cesare da Sesto |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2505|David and Jonathan  |Cima da         |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |    |                    |    Conegliano  | |              |    |            |
  |2506|Virgin and Child    |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2507|A Lady              |Bart. Veneziano |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2508|Virgin and Child    |Florentine      |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2509|A Youth             |Alv. Vivarini   |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2510|Raphael (?)         |Umbrian _School_|"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2511|A Musician          |Giulio Campi    |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2512|The Magdalen        |Correggio       |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2513|Virgin and Child    |Tiepolo         |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2514|Grand Canal         |Canaletto       |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2515|Piazza S. Marco     |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2516|Procuratie          |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2517|Buildings           |Guardi          |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2518|Archway             |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2519|Courtyard           |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2520|Quay-side           |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2521|Rains               |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2522|Treasure-seekers    |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2523|Archway             |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2524|Tower of Mestre     |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2525|Piazza S. Marco     |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2526|Peasant and Child   |Spanish         |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2527|Earl of Monmouth    |J. G. Gonzalez  |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2528|Man with Glove      |Frans Hals      |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2529|Lady with Fan       |  "             |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2530|A Lady              |C. Janssens     |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |2531|St. Bavon, Haarlem  |P. Saenredam    |G|B. George     |1910|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Salting    |    |            |
  |2532|Woman and Sheep     |Jan Wynants     |"|B.    "       | "  |            |
  |2533|Sandy Lane          |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2534|River Scene         |A. van der Neer |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2535|Judith              |E. van der Neer |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2536|Moonlight           |A. van der Neer |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2537|Landscape           |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2538|Diana Bathing       |Rembrandt       |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2539|Man with Cap        |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2540|The Hurdy-Gurdy     |A. van Ostade   |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2541|The Cobbler         |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2542|Courtship           |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2543|Man with Jug        |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2544|The Cart            |I. van Ostade   |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2545|River Scene         |A. Cuyp         |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2546|Lady and Child      |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2547|Cattle              |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2548|Grey Horse          |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2549|Tailor's Shop       |Q. Brekelenham  |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2550|Afternoon Nap       |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2551|Scouring Pans       |P. van der      |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |    |                    |    Bosch       | |              |    |            |
  |2552|Refusing the Glass  |P. de Hooch     |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2553|A Lady's Toilet     |J. Ochtervelt   |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2554|Saddling a Horse    |P. Wouwerman    |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2555|Woman Asleep        |Jan Steen       |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2556|The Pedlar          |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2557|Merry-Makers        |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2558|Grace before Meat   |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2559|Oyster Feast        |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2560|Skittle Players     |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2561|View near Haarlem   |J. Ruysdael     |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2562|Ruined Castle       |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2563|Forest Entrance     |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2564|A Cottage           |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2565|Haystack            |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2566|A Forest            |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2567|Sea-piece           |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2568|Lady at Virginals   |Jan Vermeer     |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2569|Boors Drinking      |A. Brouwer      |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2570|Woody Landscape     |Hobbema         |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2571|    "               |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2572|The Little Farm     |A. van de Velde |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2573|Sea-piece           |W. van de Velde |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2574|A Calm              |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2575|Musical Party       |A. Palamedes    |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2576|Family Group        |Pieter Codde    |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2577|Soft Breeze         |Jan van Goyen   |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2578|Windmill            |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2579|The Siene           |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2580|River Scene         |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2581|A. van Leuwenhoek   |Maes            |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2582|Fruit and Flowers   |David de Heem   |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2583|Cattle              |Paul Potter     |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2584|Lady with Mirror    |Pieter Codde    |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2585|St. Mary Magdalene  |A. Ysenbrandt   |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2586|Coast Scene         |Van de Cappelle |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2587|A Calm              |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2588|Dutch Galliot       |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2589|Young Astrologer    |Frans van       |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |    |                    |   Mieris       | |              |    |            |
  |2590|Woman at a Window   |G. Metsu        |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |2591|The Forge           |  "             |"|B.   "        | "  |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |2592|Fruit Piece         |W. K. Heda      |G|B. George     |1910|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Salting    |    |            |
  |2593|Man's Portrait      |Petrus Cristus  |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2594|Duke of Cleves      |Memlinc         |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2595|Virgin and Child    |D. Bouts        |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2596|St. Jerome          |Gerard David    |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2597|Venetian Gentleman  |J. S. Calcar    |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2598|Diana and Endymion  |Rubens          |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2599|The Doctor          |D. Teniers (jr.)|"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2600|Card Player         |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2601|Old Woman Reading   |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2602|Man with Ring       |Flemish _School_|"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2603|Virgin and Child    |Cologne _School_|"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2604|Young Man           |C. Amberger     |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2605|Dr. Fuchsius        |B. Bruyn        |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2606|Madonna Enthroned   |Flemish _School_|"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2607|Man with Medallion  |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2608|Virgin and Child    |R. Campin       |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2609|    "               |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2610|A. de Bourbon       |Corneille       |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2611|Man in Black        |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2612|Louis XI.           |Burgundian      |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2613|Philip and Margaret |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2614|Mary Magdalene      |French _School_ |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2615|Mary of France      |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2616|A Lady              |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2617|Duchess d'Angoulême |French _School_ |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2618|Virgin and Child    |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2619|Landscape           |N. Poussin      |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2620|The Happy Mother    |Fragonard       |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2621|Willows             |Daubigny        |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2622|River Scene         |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2623|Alders              |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2624|Garden Wall         |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2625|The Bent Tree       |Corot           |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2626|Wood Gatherer       |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2627|Evening on Lake     |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2628|Noon                |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2629|A Ford              |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2630|Cows and Marsh      |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2631|Fisherman's Hut     |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2632|The Storm           |Diaz            |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2633|Stormy Sunset       |  "             |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2634|River Scene         |Dupré           |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2635|Sunset: Auvergne    |T. Rousseau     |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2636|The Whisper         |Millet          |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2669|St. Clement and     |de Jean Perréal |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |    |  Donor             |  Maître        | |              |    |            |
  |2670|Lady with Rosary    |Flemish _School_|"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2671|A Pietà             |Francia         |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2672|Venetian Gentleman  |Alv. Vivarini   |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2673|Narcissus           |Beltraffio      |"|B.     "      | "  |            |
  |2709|Mother and Child    |J. Maris        |"|G. J. C. J.   | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Drucker    |    |            |
  |2710|Drawbridge          |  "             |"|G.     "      | "  |            |
  |2711|Watering Horses     |Mauve           |"|G.     "      | "  |            |
  |2712|Haarlem Church      |Bosboom         |"|G.     "      | "  |            |
  |2713|The Philosopher     |Israels         |"|G.     "      | "  |            |
  |2714|Grandfather's Birthday|Isabey        |"|G.     "      | "  |            |
  |2715|Fishmarket          |  "             |"|G.     "      | "  |            |
  |2723|Landscape           |_Asc. to_ G.    |"|G. P. Pusey   |1849|            |
  |2724|    "               |  Roussin       |"|G.     "      | "  |            |
  |2725|Christ Blessing     |B. Diana        |"|G. Sir C.     |1910|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Phillips   |    |            |
  |2727|Pont de la Tournelle|S. Lepine       |"|G. J. C. J.   | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Drucker    |    |            |
  |2731|Landscape           |Buitenweg       |"|P. Lord       | "  |W. _£100_   |
  |    |                    |                | |   Northbrook |    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

  /=============================================================================\
  |    |                    |                |H| How Acquired.|    |            |
  | No.|      SUBJECT.      |    PAINTER.    |u|P.= Purchased.|When|  Price.    |
  |    |                    |                |n|G.= Given.    |    |            |
  |    |                    |                |g|B.=Bequeathed.|    |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|
  |2732|Shipwrecked Mariner |Israels         |"|G. Mrs. A.    |1910|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Young      |    |            |
  |2757|Tartarus            |Callot          |"|G. Miss       |1884|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Appleyard  |    |            |
  |2758|A Squall            |Boudin          |"|G. T. W. Bacon|1910|            |
  |2759|Stormy Landscape    |G. Michel       |"|G.    "       | "  |            |
  |2764|Family Group       |_Asc. to_ Vermeer|"|P. M.         | "  |C. _£1000_  |
  |    |                    |                | |   Flersheim  |    |            |
  |2767|The Sea             |Courbet         |"|G. J. P.      |1911|            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Heseltine  |    |            |
  |2790|The Magi            |Mabuse          |"|[282]Lady     | "  |    40,000  |
  |    |                    |                | |   Carlisle   |    |            |
  |2856|Cavalier            |P. Quast        |"|B. Mrs. C. L. | "  |            |
  |    |                    |                | |   Eastlake   |    |            |
  |2862|John Gualberto      |Lorenzo Monaco  |"|G. H. Wagner  |1912|            |
  |2863|Virgin and Child    |Sch. Gozzoli    |"|G.   "        | "  |            |
  |----+--------------------+----------------+-+--------------+----+------------|

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.


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FOOTNOTES:

[265] Pictures bought out of the Chantrey Bequest are not included. For
these see Vol. II.

[266] The number of this picture has now been given to the foregoing,
which has only recently been exhibited.

[267] This picture does not appear in the Official Catalogue; nor can I
find any trace, in the Director's Annual Reports, of what was done with
it. Its number has now been given to the foregoing picture, which has
only recently been exhibited.

[268] The donor was informed when he offered these two pictures that
they were too large, in view of the limited wall-space then at the
disposal of the Gallery, to be placed in the rooms to which the public
were admitted. The pictures were presented on those terms, and for many
years were not numbered or incorporated in the Official Catalogue. They
are now Nos. 2723, 2724.

[269] No. 622 appears to have been missed in the official numbering.

[270] No. 723 appears to have been missed in the official numbering.

[271] The central portion of this triptych was bought in 1874 for £525.
The two side panels were bought in 1878, at the sale of Mr. Barker's
pictures, for £33:12s., and were added to the central compartment under
the same number (909).

[272] £1224 from public Funds, £151:10s. from Lewis Fund.

[273] 1313 and 1318 were purchased together for £2500.

[274] £25,000 from a Parliamentary Grant; £30,000 from private gifts
(see p. xv.)

[275] 1313 and 1318 were purchased together for £2500.

[276] 1324 and 1326 were purchased together for £2500.

[277] Under the terms of Sir C. Eastlake's will these pictures were
offered to the National Gallery at the prices which he paid for them.

[278] This sum was made up as follows:--Special Grant from the
Treasury, £12,500; from the Annual Grant for 1898-99, £1550; gifts by
Mr. Alfred de Rothschild and Mr. Heseltine, £500 each.

[279] £9000 from the Parliamentary grant; the remainder subscribed by
Mr. W. W. Astor, Mr. A. Beit, Lord Burton, Lord Iveagh, Mr. J. Pierpont
Morgan, and Lady Wantage.

[280] To this sum Messrs. Colnaghi contributed £1000.

[281] Presented by the National Art-Collections Fund with the aid of a
grant from the Government of £10,000.

[282] The National Gallery funds provided £15,000; the Treasury made
a special grant of £15,000; and the National Art-Collections Fund
contributed £10,000.


       *       *       *       *       *

      Transcriber's Notes:

      Obvious spelling & typos corrected.

      Italic is enclosed in _underscores_.

      Bold is enclosed in =equals=.

      [Symbol: hand pointing right] has been replaced with -->.

      Removed first MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON from the books
      on art section as it is redundant.

      P. xix through xxi is a list of updates. Author mostly used
      "see also" notation in the INDEX LIST OF PAINTERS for the old
      reference. Added same notation to missed index entries. Added
      similar "See also" references to the NUMERICAL CATALOGUE. Also
      updated INDEX LIST OF PICTURES where the author missed.

      Moved "Portrait of a Young Man, 1052" from "Milanese School" to
      "Lombard School (artist unknown)" in INDEX LIST OF PAINTERS to
      agree with NUMERICAL CATALOGUE & INDEX LIST OF PICTURES.

      Moved "Adoration of the Magi, 582" from "Angelico, _School of_"
      to "Angelico, Fra, p. 329" in INDEX LIST OF PAINTERS to agree
      with NUMERICAL CATALOGUE & INDEX LIST OF PICTURES.

      Added "Judgment of Paris, 209" to "Poelenburgh, Cornelis van"
      in INDEX LIST OF PAINTERS to agree with NUMERICAL CATALOGUE and
      INDEX LIST OF PICTURES.

      Moved "Scene on the Ice, 1850" from "Meulen A. F. van der" to
      "Vermeulen, Andries" in INDEX LIST OF PAINTERS to agree with
      NUMERICAL CATALOGUE and INDEX LIST OF PICTURES.

      Moved "Interior of a Stable, 1851" from "Meulen A. F. van der"
      to "Dutch School (artists unknown)" in INDEX LIST OF PAINTERS
      to agree with NUMERICAL CATALOGUE and INDEX LIST OF PICTURES.